Welcome to Pillars of Success, LLC

  Jacqueline Barnett founded Pillars of Success, LLC based on a passion to help businesses achieve tangible results in unique ways and to help individuals, teams and organizations achieve their full potential.  Jacqueline has "walked the talk" with a combined 22 years of executive level management, consulting and training experience. She is consistently recognized for her engaging and impactful speaking style and is a keynote favorite at conventions and seminars.


What are you doing on your farm?

By Brigitte Hisey - Natural Resource Specialist, Fayette SWCD

Tom Shaw

What are farmers doing to help with conservation? More than you think. Each week we are going to highlight some of the conservation practices that are being used in Fayette County.

The Shaws maintain their fence rows and windbreaks by choice and it is an act of understanding the importance of a good conservation practice. Tom Shaw 15 years ago decided to add windbreaks to his field. He added a diversity of hardwoods and evergreens like wild cherry, crabapple, oak, white pine, persimmon, blue spruce, ash, and butternut in double rows. The windbreaks helps protect his livestock and gives them shade as well as a wind barrier in cold weather. This reduces the energy requirement that cattle need to maintain their body temperature.

There are many other practical benefits to having windbreaks between fields. One of the most obvious is reducing soil loss from wind. This is evident in the winter when the snow turns brown from soil particles being blown around. Field windbreaks also protect crops from wind damage and may increase crop yields by 10 percent, especially in dry years.

The environmental benefits of windbreaks include protecting water and air quality by providing a barrier against airborne soil, chemical drift, odors and dust. Trees are also important in capturing carbon. The Shaws have also seen a diversity of wildlife. They have also added a wetland to their property. The tree corridor and the wetland provide habitat for bob white quail, bobolinks, foxes, pheasants, and turtles, to list a few of the species seen on the farm.

Fence rows and windbreaks dotted many farms in the past but have diminished over time as fields have gotten bigger. All farmers and landowners are managers of their land base. When you look at managing your land for the future and what you want your landscape to look like beyond the present, consideration for economics and environmental benefits can coincide. Adding diversity helps everyone. Tom and Mary Lou Shaw have added conservation practices that are both economically and environmentally beneficial.

Tom Shaw
http://www.recordherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2016/09/web1_Tom-Shaw-and-living-fence-in-cows-27-meadow.jpgTom Shaw

By Brigitte Hisey

Natural Resource Specialist, Fayette SWCD


Justice Sotomayor Denies Hobby Lobby Request on HHS Mandate

This column by ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski was published on December 27, 2012 on

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has denied Hobby Lobby’s emergency application to be exempted from the HHS Mandate on abortion services, but that should not be considered a sign that the HHS Mandate will survive its legal challenges in the end.

The war on religious liberty continues. Despite repeated promises from President Barack Obama and his allies that they would not use Obamacare to force people to violate their religious beliefs regarding abortion, Obama handpicked an abortion-hardliner as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Kathleen Sebelius.

Predictably, Sebelius promulgated a regulation last February saying that a plain-vanilla provision in Obamacare requiring employers to cover “preventive services” means they must provide birth control, sterilization, and abortion-related services. To millions of religious Americans–especially millions of faithful Roman Catholics–such things are immoral, violating their religious consciences and potentially ending a human life.

There are over forty lawsuits in federal court across the country challenging the HHS Mandate, both as a violation of religious exercise in the First Amendment and also a violation of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which forbids government actions that impose a substantial burden on religious freedom unless they are the least restrictive means to achieve some compelling public interest.

One high-profile plaintiff in these cases is Hobby Lobby. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is representing Hobby Lobby, wholly-owned by a devoutly religious family that objects to abortion. Hobby Lobby’s lawsuit lost in federal court in Oklahoma, and then the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver refused to block the mandate while the appeal is ongoing.

Becket’s loss thus far in this case is in contrast with the major victory Becket won last week in another federal appeals court, where (as we rightly predicted) the D.C. Circuit issued an injunction forbidding HHS from enforcing its regulation as currently written against Christian colleges. It’s also in contrast with early court victories in some of the other lawsuits by the Alliance Defending Freedom, among others.

Becket petitioned Justice Sotomayor to set aside the HHS Mandate while this case proceeds, and also for the Supreme Court to grant certiorari and take the case for an ultimate decision now. Sotomayor denied both requests. But this first denial of Supreme Court action does not at all suggest the justices will not eventually strike down the HHS Mandate.

Each of the thirteen federal appeals courts are overseen by one of the nine Supreme Court justices, and the application for an injunction was submitted to Sotomayor because she is the circuit justice over the Tenth Circuit.

But denying such a request for an injunction does not at all suggest the justices will ultimately rule in favor of the Obama administration. Preliminary injunctions–that is, orders issued before the matter has gone through the judicial process–are rare. Courts are supposed to be careful and deliberate.

It’s not uncommon for the Supreme Court to issue a stay against a court of appeals’ final decision if that ruling is likely to come to the Supreme Court. In those instances, the justices are merely preserving status quo until they decide the case, since sometimes you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube once it’s out.

This is different. Here, the appellate court hasn’t even made a definitive ruling on the merits. The Tenth Circuit was ruling on a motion for a preliminary injunction while the lawyers were preparing legal briefs and offering oral arguments in that lower court on why the HHS Mandate is illegal. Justice Sotomayor was being asked to issue a ruling in the absence of even a full-fledged appellate opinion, which gives her very little to work with.

She still had the power to do it, but the bar is set higher under those circumstances. The further a case is from final judgment, the more reluctant a Supreme Court justice is to issue an injunction. A justice will often only issue such an order if it is almost beyond question that the applicant is entitled to relief. In the words of late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, such an order is only issued if “the legal rights at issue are indisputably clear.” The HHS Mandate litigation poses a contested question of federal law, and while the courts should eventually hold that the HHS Mandate clearly violates RFRA, that result is not beyond dispute before a court hears arguments on the issue.

It is interesting that Justice Sotomayor handled this application the way she did. Sotomayor is a liberal jurist, appointed by Obama, and although abortion has not been squarely before the Supreme Court since her appointment, she is widely expected to be a staunch supporter of abortion rights. A circuit justice has the option of ruling upon such an application individually, or referring it to the full Court for all nine justices to vote. It would have been interesting to see how Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Anthony Kennedy would vote on this.

But now the issue continues in the lower courts. Given Hobby Lobby’s size, it could face fines in excess of one million dollars after the HHS Mandate kicks in against it on Jan. 1. The extent of these fines could have been cited as a justification for granting an injunction now, but instead Hobby Lobby or one of these other cases will have to take that risk until the process fully plays out, and the Supreme Court then takes up the HHS Mandate, quite possibly in late 2013.


Coupland is an unincorporated community in Williamson County, Texas, United States. The population of the area is approximately 1000. Coupland is home to the famed Coupland Inn and Dancehall, an eatery, bed and breakfast, and dancehall which has been in the community for nearly 100 years. Couplands athletic teams are the "Cowboys", and the area is one of the safest in Williamson County. (ACCORDING TO WHAT? NO CITATION. ) The Coupland Independent School District serves area students. Coupland ISD serves grades K-8. Upon "graduation" the students either go to Elgin, Taylor, or Thrall for high school courses.

Appellate Law Lawyers In Coupland Texas

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What kinds of remedies are there for muscle cramps?

Many possibilities. One of the most common symptoms of varicose veins and venous incompetence is leg cramps. As much as 70% of the time, people with varicose veins will have leg cramps. Although there are many other possible causes, as others have said, if you have any visible veins in your legs, you should see a venous specialist (phlebologist) for help.


dinsdag 11 augustus 2009

Astrology chart Olivia Newton-John

Olivia Newton-John's chart has the ethereal planet Neptune without major aspects; a so called 'calling' Neptune. It means that she is an empathic person with fantasy or compassion or vision at any possible level. Such a 'calling' state of Neptune is perfect for an artist and for a romantic person. Neptune is even more important, because of the 67.5 degrees from AC/MC (that is a sesqui semi square), making Neptune of crucial importance. The important Neptune goes together with a strong Moon in Cancer in the 10th house (for the ability to memorize and keep memories alive by interpreting or copying behavior = acting). Venus is conjunct the midpoint Sun/Moon for being motivated by pleasure, entertainment and beauty. The mutual reception of Sun and Venus at the end of the vocational routing through the MC also points at the star in the world of entertainment, the beauty. With the Sun in Libra and Moon in Cancer (ruled by Venus and Moon) she was already born with sense of beauty. Mercury quintile Venus gives her a creative talent in communications.

With Jupiter opposition, Venus sextile and Neptune 112.5 degrees from Midheaven, her public career is related to having devoted fans and followers (the Jupiter-Neptune combination) even though she sings that she is totally devoted to YOU:)
Jupiter is sesquisquare AC/MC (Neptune is 67.5 AC/MC): this shows again how important her fans are for her position in society.
I don't often name the Pars Fortunae, but it is very obviously positioned on top of the chart (exactly square AC, conjunct Midheaven). You'd almost think that Olivia was born for fortune, if you didn't know that she survived breast cancer and that a nasty affair keeps coming back in the press...

On June 30, 2005 Patrick McDermott (a man without date of birth, adopted) disappeared during a fishing*) trip. He is presumed to be alive and well and only on the run because of debts. Rumors grow, and it may not be long before he will be arrested. He lived with Olivia Newton-John, who's now married (since 2008). That brings a nasty story back into her life during the transit of Saturn square her Midheaven and with Mars opposition Uranus in her progressed chart. When her friend left home she had:
- progressed Sun changing sign (and the first aspects in the new sign would be with Saturn - a square - and Uranus - trine-)
- transit Pluto square Ascendant
- progressed Midheaven inconjunct Vertex
Olivia has indications for separation from men and problems with males in general in her natal chart. Conflicts with Mars (square Pluto, 75 degrees from Saturn, sesquisquare Uranus, square Venus) show that she needs to take care who to trust and that she might be forced to defend herself (for example: against aggression). The semi quintile of Mars and Jupiter shows creative enterprise. But let's get back to the artist in the chart.

Why is she a singer/actor and not a painter, for example? Look at the Midheaven in Gemini, pointing at communications and messages. And the ruler, Mercury, doesn't make Ptolemaic aspects in sign or orb 5 degrees. When a planet doesn't make major aspects in sign it is a 'calling' planet. What Mercury calls is the voice, the message and communication in general. She is not a writer, but a singer and actor because of the elevated ruler of the 5th house: show, entertainment!

She started her solo career in 1969, when the progressed Uranus returned to the natal position. Perhaps this stimulated her individuality. In 1974 she won the Eurovision Song Festival with 'A long live love'. Shortly after that she went to the USA. In 1974 her progressed Sun was in the 29th degree of Libra. The position of the Sun in the final degrees of a sign is reflecting a transformational period. The final aspect in that sign was with the ruler of Midheaven (Mercury). She became famous all over the world. Jupiter's crucial angular position (opposition Midheaven and sesquisquare AC/MC) tells us that traveling is of importance for her career. I already mentioned the importance of Neptune. In 1978 (the year of GREASE) in the progressed chart Neptune was conjunct the Ascendant.

She was born with Saturn rising before the Sun. Later, in progression, Neptune became the oriental planet. A prominent Saturn and Neptune sesquisquare Node and square Midheaven AND conjunct Ascendant might be indicating the period of illness in her life. The period of the battle against cancer in 1992 is mirrored by the progressed aspect of Sun square Pluto. This aspect often intensifies the lifestyle, changes it and brings problems (Pluto) to the light (Pluto), the hard way (square). Notice that her progressed Midheaven changed sign to indicate that her condition, position and public name altered in that year, 1992.

*) interesting coincidence is that Neptune (the most important planet in the chart of Olivia) is the god of the sea.

Interested in the chart of John Travolta? It is HERE...

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Crime in America: a reference handbook by Jennifer L. Durham

By Jennifer L. Durham

Crime in the USA provides various viewpoints at the keep watch over of crime, anti-crime efforts via laws and neighborhood motion, and the successes and screw ups of legislation enforcement and the felony justice method in facing crime in American society today.A chronology detailing historic advancements and demanding statistical fluctuations in U.S. crime throughout the twentieth century, very important figures within the ongoing anti-crime campaign, laws excerpts, records, annotated print and nonprint source lists, and outlines of presidency and personal enterprises around out this important reference device.

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Additional resources for Crime in America: a reference handbook

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Passing bad checks is a common offense that does not require access to large banks or corporate accounts, although computer verification systems and an increasing preference for other forms of payment are making it more difficult for criminals to write bad checks. Increasingly, stolen credit cards present a real danger, but companies are also taking steps to combat that problem. Photos appear on some users' cards, and many stores keep computerized records of signatures when a customer signs a receipt.

Today, the word is used to describe a number of criminal organizations. The first Italian Mafia members who caused trouble in the United States were recognized by authorities in New Orleans in the late 1800s. Around the turn of the twentieth century, large numbers of immigrants from Eastern Europe and other places began to arrive in the United States, and every group seemed to have its own criminal organizations. Groups of Irish, Jewish, and Italian gangsters sprang up in cities like Chicago and New York, where immigrants were concentrated in ethnic neighborhoods.

S. S. 6 Legislation and stepped-up police presence are not solving the problem. S. crime. The remainder of this chapter describes in general terms trends in crime, various forms of crime, different approaches to crime control, the criminal justice system, and victims. How Serious Is the Crime Problem? If we look at FBI statistics since the 1960s, the crime problemespecially violent crimehas increased greatly. Some optimistic commentators have pointed to slight drops in crime rates in Page 3 recent years as evidence that the crime situation is improving, but compared to the levels of thirty years ago, the rate of offenses remains high.

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An essay on knowlege, learning, peace, and truth.

Six ways of knowing
The Two Deepest Ways of Knowing

by Dr. Abdul Aziz Said

The following appears on our web site with permission and by the courtesy of the Center for Global Peace American University, Washington, D.C.

It was given as lecture by Dr. Abdul Aziz Said Mohammed Said Farsi Professor of Islamic Peace Director, International Peace and Conflict Resolution Division Director, Center for Global Peace American University, Washington, D.C. We thank him for his work.

Anyone who prints out or quotes the article must give full credit to the author and institution he is affiliated with, and no reprint of the article can occur without written permission of the author.

Abdul Aziz Said
University of Georgia
1995 - 1996 Humanities Center Lecture Series
April 8, 1996

Logical and analytical thinking is common, useful, and well valued, but it's not the only way of knowing.  It's only the most outward way of knowing.  Other, more inner ways of knowing are just as important.  There are realities we can't know through analysis.  Yet inner and outer knowing don't contradict each other.  Knowledge doesn't contradict knowledge.

Section I of this essay describes six ways of knowing, five of them neglected because they are inner-oriented, dominant education methods being outward oriented.  These inner ways are the key to resolving conflicts on a small and world scale.  Inwardness is the basis of the peace process.  Section II of this essay explains why this is so.  The discussion indicates how spirituality-based conflict resolution works.  Section III deals with the deepest ways of knowing- inspiration and transformation.  Section IV applies the themes of inner knowing to positivism and post-positivism and finds these methodologies lacking.  Post-positivism attempts to discredit the rational mind and shift knowledge still further outward into the political currents of gender, race and class.  Positivism, over emphasizes the rational mind.  It depends on quantitative methods of research to the exclusion of qualitative ones.  Qualitative research, discovery intention, is the key to understanding history, economics and international relations.

  I.  Six Different Ways of Knowing

Logic and analysis involve conceptualizations of sense perception.  This is outer knowledge, but conceptualizing sense data is already moving inward.  Success in logic depends on inner reflection, the noticing of thoughts, in order to discriminate fallacious thought movements from valid inferences.  Intellectual discrimination moves still further inward, taking positions, often practical ones, on the basis of information after deductive and inductive logic have reached their limits.  The rightness of logic is thus a subset of intellectual rightness and wholeness, including intuitive rightness.  Intuition of underlying spiritual reality brings wholeness to disparate fields.  Freedom is such a reality, unifying market economics, democratic politics, pluralistic cultures, and much more. These ways of knowing need to find a place in education.

A.  A Healthy Rational Mind Includes Logic and Analysis

We can achieve a lot with logic.  When we don't immediately see the truth of a situation, we may be able to start from another situation we do see the truth of, and reason by logical steps from there to the first one.  Or if we have some confusion, we can use analysis to get rid of it.  Here's an example:

The idea that justice is whatever you think is just, or whatever any culture regards as just, involves a confusion we can eliminate through analysis.  This confusion is about disagreement as much as it's about justice.  To get rid of the confusion we analyze what disagreement involves.  People not only disagree about justice but also about how many subatomic particles there are, and what the rate of inflation is.  That doesn't mean there's no rate of inflation, or no definite number of different subatomic particles--however hard these things are to determine.  Disagreement can't prove that.  It doesn't mean there's no correct or real object being disagreed about.  Prolonged investigation often reveals that object.

The analytical mind is a great help if it's trained to distinguish fallacies from valid inferences.  We can then clear fallacies from our mind as soon as we see what they are.  And we can direct our thoughts so they don't move from true to false positions.  But of course both these things--dismissing fallacies and making valid inferences--depend on being able to see thought sequences in the first place--and seeing thoughts is an ability beyond analysis.  That's reflection--consciousness that notices thoughts occurring in our own mind.

So critical thinking doesn't mean just criticizing our favorite opponents.  It means noticing and then evaluating our own thoughts.  Noticing them comes first.  We have to see what's really there, in our own mind.  Then analysis is the mental act of breaking this inner thought process down into complete propositions, down even further into the component concepts of propositions, and then seeing whether the movement from one proposition to the next is justified.

This seeing of the connection between one step and the next step is intuition.  Intuition is the basis of logic.  If a is greater than b, and b is greater than c, it's intuition that seesthat then a is greater than c.

So analysis depends on reflection and intuition.  It's not the most basic, let alone the only, way of knowing.  It's not even the most interesting way of knowing.  It's far from being the best way of knowing.  And there are situations where we're forced to use another way.

C.  Discrimination--Judging the Best Thing to Do

We're constantly faced with situations where analysis can't indicate good conclusions, or determine good choices.  In getting married, when we've considered all our own assets and liabilities, the age, habits, personality, income, and health of our possible partner or partners, analysis is not going to tell us which relationship, if any, will bring the most happiness and growth.  Where analysis falls short, it's a moment of decision.  That doesn't mean it's irrational or arbitrary what conclusion we draw.  There's still a right and wrong decision or conclusion.  And we may still be able to know what it is.  But that takes a different kind of knowledge than logic and analysis.  It takes intellectual discrimination.  That's the heart cooperating with the mind.

When analysis is working, it's like walking on the solid ground of information--the "grounds" of our thought.  Logic moves in secure, steady, little "steps" along this ground--"steps of reasoning."  But these steps may stop short of a conclusion.  Then we've run out of land--and arrived at a river.  The land of the past may be walked by reason.  Before us now is the river of the future, and walking is no use--we have to be able to swim.  We can do that.  Swimming is discrimination, the mind cooperating with the heart.

Discrimination is old, but it's neglected.  It's not taught in schools, but it's important; it's as important as logic.  The mind cooperating with the heart has several forms.  There's aesthetic judgment, when we discriminate the beautiful from the ugly.  There's intuitive knowing, when we discriminate the real from the unreal, the subtle truth from the dominant falseness.  There's creative imagination, and there's the sense of wholeness and "rightness".  Hunches, gut feelings, and insights may also be counted as discrimination--if they spring up from an opened unconscious, rather than from conditioned habits.

D.  Creative Imagination

Let's look first at creative imagination.  This means intentional construction of mental images.  Intentional imagination can be either masculine and directed--in which case you know exactly what you're going to visualize beforehand; or it can be feminine and inviting--in which case you turn your attention in a general direction, wait, welcome, and allow whatever images form on their own.

Creative imagination is stimulated by contemplating the beautiful and thinking about the good--love and kindness.  Beauty, love, and kindness open up the mind.  Beauty and love bear cognitive and social fruit.  It's not just that gazing at a beautiful picture or flower or mandala before doing these exercises makes them easier.  Contemplating beauty touches the unconscious.  Contemplating love opens the heart.  Thinking about kindness calms and deepens the mind.  We help our mental functioning--and our deeper ways of knowing--as much when we contemplate beauty and love as when we collect and process information.

E.  Wholeness and Rightness

The sense of wholeness or rightness is another form of real knowledge.  It comes into play when we intuit a spiritual reality running through a variety of physical or psychological or social manifestations.  Then a single idea will explain all these varied data.  That's wholeness and rightness.  The vision of the underlying spiritual reality--the power of the unifying idea, the elegance of weaving diversity into unity--makes everything whole, resolves everything, creates a harmony of logic and reason--a recognition of the rightness of that idea.

Logic links the idea theoretically to the diverse areas the idea explains, but this linkage doesn't happen without a prior insight into reality that goes beyond logic--because reality is already a universe, a harmony of interrelationship.  Somebody has to be in touch with that unified reality first--then come the idea and the logic.  Once the idea is set out intellectually, however, it can lead others toward insights.  Logical analysis can't discover or create anything, beyond its tissue of harmonious theory, but if a unifying idea is developed logically, that can nudge us toward insight, and it can communicate at least a few clues and pieces to our fellow humans.

F.  Inner Knowledge of the Outer

1.  Inner and Outer.   Solving problems by referring them to freedom comes from an internal sense of things, rather than depending on what we've been taught.  Discrimination involves an internal presence, a presence that also connects us to "outer" people and things, because it runs through everything.  Life runs through the entire population, but as long as our attention is monopolized by the external, we may think our own life is the only one we can feel.  It isn't.  But to feel others' life or reality, we have to open up inwardly.

Inwardness or introspection is potential in every human being.  It's already there.  Yet it has to be acknowledged; it has to be cultivated.  We have to open to it.  Our tendency is to ignore it.  Attention rides outward on our desires.  It flows away from our center.  Then inwardness doesn't get a chance to reveal underlying reality.  We have to practice reversing the outward flow intentionally.  Introspection deserves a program in our lives.  It's easy.  It's relaxing.  It's very pleasant.  And that's just the beginning.

There's a lot of literature available on meditation, and there are more and more meditation groups and sects.  But the basic instruction for inwardness is so simple you don't necessarily have to depend on a group or an instructor.  You sit still, close your eyes, you can put in earplugs--turn your attention away from the outside--turn toward the inside, toward your breathing, your heartbeat, your bodily sensations, posture, the ringing in your ears, the scintillating visual field in front of your closed eyes, your thoughts; and even more inward than that, the consciousness that's present when there are no thoughts.  Well, would you believe me if I told you there's still more there?  There is!  And the intrinsic nature of this inwardness is knowingness.

The different types of discrimination--wholeness and rightness, creative imagination, and so on--all draw on this internal well-spring of knowledge.  Conceptual and logical knowledge is pretty good, but really it's only one expression, one form knowingness takes.  If you're really interested in knowledge, why don't you go the source of it all, and take it all?  Well, there's a little problem here, that you might as well hear about now if you haven't already.  It's that you can't take all knowingness.  The more knowingness is there, the less you are there.

That may seem like a problem now.  But see how it feels when you dissolve in it!

Inwardness reaches toward the source of creativity.  We need creativity if we're to transform our own experience, or understand human history.

2.  Creativity and Education.  Inwardness reaches to the source of creativity.  We need creativity if we're to transform our own experience, or understand human history.  One way to move there is to direct attention to the beautiful.  If we're mindful of beauty we can find things to make our actions and surroundings more beautiful.  We can keep our buildings and rooms clean and beautiful.  Another way is to think about love, kindness, and goodness--to think about the desirable.  These thoughts soothe and open the mind.  They soften and open the unconscious.  Spontaneous insights and solutions are more likely in a milieu of beauty, compassion, quiet, and peace.  How cruel it is, in order to pass an examination, that a student's mind should be forced to hold an idea it is not ready to understand (rote memorization), because it is alien to their experience or culture.  This is the epitome of alienation in education.

The fact that discrimination is internal doesn't mean it's irrational, arbitrary, or random.  It's an expression of knowledge, as reason and analysis are an expression of knowledge.  The two are not opposed; they're related.  When we express internal knowledge in logical terms, we can then confirm it on that level.  We can test it at the level of sense perception.  We can develop discrimination through practice, and confirm it through sense experience, and through comparison with the conclusions of other discriminating observers.  We can confirm it through logic and analysis.  In mathematics, J. H. Hardy has written that great mathematical proofs are discovered through "imaginative leaps" (A Mathematician's Apology).  Having seen what is true, one then goes back and develops the logical proofs which communicate the validity of that which one has already realized.

Inner experience is the basis and context of education.  This is a truism, but how many schools use centering exercises and exploration of feelings?  Even in classically objective subjects like physics and history, centering exercises help.  In the humanities dream-journals, story-telling, and imaging open up inner understanding.  Creativity is a mark of inner opening, so it is not neglected but nourished by encouraging guessing and divergent thinking.  In cooperative education mistakes are remarked but not punished--like a mother teaching her two-year-old to speak.  Fear of mistakes defeats learning.  Fear to guess blocks creativity.

In cooperative education left-brain rationality is combined with holistic, nonlinear, and intuitive strategies.  This is cooperation between yin and yang consciousness.  Theoretical and abstract knowledge is complemented by experiment and experience inside and outside the classroom--field trips, apprenticeships, demonstrations, visiting experts.  Approaching consciousness from all these modalities deepens understanding.  Creative imagination--flowing from the depths of inwardness--is stimulated by contemplating the beautiful and thinking about the good.

Inwardness enables us to harmonize our different ways of knowing, to make them cooperative, to set up inner cooperation in our own mind.  This inner cooperation and harmony makes our mind more peaceful even when it is active.  The place of reflection, the place of pure knowingness of inner and outer, is always at peace.

  II.  Peace

Peace through domination and submission destroys consensus, relationship, and environment.  Conflicts are now about group identity, not ideology.  These are hard to resolve by deals between government officials whose own populations have ceased to be homogeneous.  Values and beliefs have to be taken into account.  This is possible by realizing the universal forms of human suffering.  Spiritual respect is always at hand.  Peace is inside.  World peace implies freedom, justice, and the elimination of structural violence.  Peace is a process, embracing all opposites, and achievable through one outer and three inner stages.  Pacifying the mind--emptying it of thoughts--allows inspiration to create new insights.  Real knowledge is so inner that even the outer is inner.  Knower, knowledge, and known become one whole.

A.  Secular and Religious Models of Peace Are Both Limited

Throughout much of human history peace has been seen in many ways that reduced its pursuit and achievement to the purpose of domination.  Dominant cultures imposed their visions of peace to limit both processes and social outcomes so as to insure their continued domination.

A second commonly held view of peace equates it with passivity and the isolated tolerance of intolerable conditions.  The harmony of the individual is preserved by a direct identification with the supreme being and what is sacred.  This conceptualization derives its inspiration from some of the teachings in various religious traditions.

Both perspectives of peace, the secular and the ecclesiastical, have validity but carried to their extremes reveal excesses that undermine security.  We need to transcend our conceptual categories to move peace beyond the absolutism of politics and religion.  The traditional political and religious conceptual regimes have undermined the consensus of ideas, and underscored the isolation of people.  The same regimes have also neglected to establish a proper relationship with our physical environment.  The whole planet must be a context for human security.

B.  A Global Society

The first truly global political community has begun to emerge around us.  What we in the international relations community call the inter-penetration of states has in recent decades not only occurred in the Western world, it has probably evolved so far as to be irreversible short of global catastrophe.  We have moved from a humanity which lived its collective life as fragments of the whole, into a new context of humanity as a whole.

It is now no longer correct to speak of the West as sharply distinct from the East, or even to speak of the North as opposed to the South.  These distinctions are more appropriate as generalizations for popular mythology than as descriptions for actual international relations.  Manufactured goods presently exported by the global South (Third World) equal the value of the manufactured goods exported by the United States.  Other examples abound:  Japan is losing market share in steel and electronic home appliances to South Korea.  Truly global industries are emerging and, along with them, the foundations for a global economic system.

C.  Spirituality-Based Conflict Resolution

The global system of the 90s is a pluralistic one with a crude but vital form of egalitarianism, as contrasted with the essentially European-rooted aristocratic state system it is replacing.  Actors will approach each other differently than they used to.  Whereas heretofore they pursued their destinies, and resolved their conflicts, within a rigid and hierarchical social system, they will increasingly function within a pluralistic and egalitarian one.  Few conflicts will have ideological roots.  Most conflicts will involve communal identity--race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.  These conflicts are proving to be intractable to the best efforts of dominant methods of conflict resolution.

Traditional techniques of conflict resolution using mechanistic, problem-solving methods, including the often manipulative signaling of positions, are suitable for dealing with conflicts about tangible material interests, for which it is usually possible to forge some sort of compromise.  In contrast, nonmaterial identity-based conflicts are often not well understood by diplomats accustomed to operating in a Western, state-centered, culturally homogeneous system.  In the new international environment, viable conflict resolution requires an understanding of the beliefs, values, and behavior of the conflicting parties.

Plato said that while we might not be able to agree with each other, if we have opened an honest conversation, we will be able to empathize with the human predicament each of us finds ourself in, because human life is so similar in its deeper significance and issues, whatever our society and culture.

There is increasing concern about fundamentalism in the Islamic world.  We need to see also that the engineering, mechanistic, isolated approach to problem-solving is part of a type of fundamentalism of the dominant Western culture.  Fundamentalism is a kind of pathology of culture that arises by taking part of the basic tenets of a tradition and, under the pressure of either economic or social insecurity, desires to secure oneself by sealing off others or seeking revenge on them.  In all conflict situations, people under stress react by reducing their own beliefs to a small workable sub-set in order to fight and protect.  But this closes off the ability to hear and to communicate.  A return to the larger frame of the culture and its humane values, always present if sought for, can open up the space for understanding, cooperation, or, at the very least, deeper respect.  This is the essence of spirituality.

D.  Inwardness Is a Peace Process

Inner knowledge is a peace-making and healing process.  Peace refers to the inner freedom and spiritual elevation of the individual.  The place of peace lies within our spiritual domain.  It is there to be discovered and developed.  World politics is a struggle for world peace in  the broadest peace, that peace is more than the absence of war, but also is the presence of justice and freedom.

Peace is not seen as an abstract goal to be pursued.  Peace is a direct process of doing and being.  Peace is a process.  Peace includes both the absence of direct physical violence and war, and the elimination of structural violence.  The latter refers to the consequences of social, political, cultural, economic, and civil structures--institutions and processes that lower the material and spiritual quality of human life and degrade the environment.  Success in this struggle for world peace is dependent upon transcending in the critical areas the provincialism of the nation-states and making more real a world community.

Peace is a state of consciousness that implies and incorporates all experiences.  This state of consciousness does not oppose any state of consciousness but rather is, in itself, a totality, a whole.  And in being a whole, it includes what we usually conceive of as peace and war.

  III.  The Two Deepest Ways of Knowing

Inspiration and transformation--union of knower, known, and knowing--are the deepest ways of knowing.

A.  Inspiration

Now another level down, another level inward.  Now we move to deeper knowledge than discrimination.  Discrimination has to do with choosing alternatives that are already there.  Discrimination allows us to discern the best conclusion from a menu of alternatives.  We evaluate an idea or program presented by somebody else and sometimes simply feel "it doesn't make sense" (this seems to be the increasing feeling about many political programs).  Or we discriminate the ugly from the beautiful when we encounter paintings, buildings, or gardens.

But how do we gain access to new ideas, new insights, new wisdom to which discrimination and analysis may subsequently be applied? One way is inspiration.

Inspiration is the reverse of discrimination.   Discrimination focuses our internal consciousness on the concept, the painting, the problem, or the decision at hand.  Or it takes all the choices and data that are there, and then goes inward with them for an underlying insight.  Beauty is an underlying insight, an underlying reality.  It's not the grams of paint, the cm width, the degree of curvature of the capstone, and so on.  Discrimination collects and marshals all these inputs together, and holds them in inwardness, until the insight occurs.

Inspiration is the reverse of this.  There's still inwardness, but the contents of the mind are eliminated.  If we want new ideas, creativity, if we want inspiration, we must empty ourselves internally.  New ideas can't arise if the mind is constantly occupied by the usual crowd of habits, desires, and fixations--constant internal dialogue.  We have to evacuate our minds!  We create a mental vacuum into which the new can come.  This is a vacuum of ideas, not of consciousness.  Ideas are gone, but consciousness is there.  Since ideas use up some consciousness, we actually find a little more consciousness there when we've got rid of the ideas.

I'm sure by this time I don't need to tell you that emptying the mind doesn't mean we become stupid.  It doesn't mean despising or rejecting analysis or discrimination. What it means is we learn when to use logic, when to use discrimination--when to fill the mind and make it active working on its contents--and on the other hand when to suspend judgment, empty the mind, stop analyzing and evaluating, and make ourselves open to the unexpected.  We learn to surrender to the grace of the moment.

Through a balance of analysis, discrimination, and inspiration, we can become wise, truly "knowing" human  beings.  Knowledge can be gained in different but complementary ways--by rational and logical analysis, by reflection, intuitive insight, creative imagination, and also as a gift without any precondition--inspiration.

But there's an even deeper knowledge.  We really can't be satisfied without it.  All the ways of knowing so far are knowing about something, and it's ultimately unsatisfying to merely know about something.  The only really satisfying and 100% real knowledge is to become the reality.

B.  Knowledge as Being and Transformation

Real knowledge is always knowledge of the unity of existence.  It's relational. It realizes the relationship among all of existence.  At the level of separate individuals, we respect their freedom and we don't initiate violence against them.  At the level of the whole, individuals are all activities of the one being.  Alan Watts used to say that the universe earths and peoples.  That brings out the more basic reality--the creative whole.  That's more real than its passing forms; it's still there when the individual disappears.

We think we're the individual, but our deeper reality is the whole reality. And the question to investigate is, How is the whole creating this limited body and limited consciousness right now?  How can we connect with this creative whole, producing not only our own individual self but every other one?  Knowledge of this takes becoming the whole.

At the same time, we have our individual identity.  The whole is reflected and replicated in the parts.  And from the parts we gain the knowledge to construct the whole.  Ibn Arabi, a Twelfth Century Muslim mystic and philosopher, defines knowledge as perceiving and being that which is.  The purpose of knowing, therefore, is transformation.  In fact, to know is to be transformed.  It is to be transformed into the whole.  The division of knower, knowledge, and known is gone.

This knowledge blends the heart and the head.  The heart directs the head to its proper purpose--to know the unity of existence--and the head focuses the heart's energies so the transformation process can occur.

Since knowledge itself is being, and being is awareness, the search for knowledge starts with the question, "How can I find this unity of existence and knowledge?"  Because knowledge leads to the unity of existence, knowledge frees us from the illusion that we are a separate individual.  This body must come to an end.  This mind lasts a good deal longer, it lasts a number of lifetimes, but even the separate mind must eventually expire.  But neither the separate mind nor the separate body is who we are.  Who we really are does not come to an end, but to know this, we have to become it, and that means going inward.

  IV.  Applications

Neglect of inner knowing is the basis of the shortcomings of both positivism and post-positivism.  Positivism deals only with quantities, but human events involve intentions, which are formed in freedom, and known in inwardness.  Post-positivism's neglect of inner knowing keeps it from seeing spiritual realities, deeper than group perceptions.  Historical, economic, and international relations models do not work, because models exclude intentions.  The case of President Sadat's peace initiatives enables us to see how qualitative research--research into intentions--restores meaning to subjects like history.  International relations and global understanding also take non-linear approaches.  These are organic systems, each of whose elements affects all the other elements.  The whole system changes, when a single element changes.

A.  Limitations of Post-Positivism and the Rational Mind

When we limit ourselves to the external knowledge the rational mind can process, we make it hard to experience expanded consciousness, knowingness, and reality.  If we stay at the level of sense perception and the rational mind, we're not going to experience the unity of existence.  Being stuck in words, logic, and sense-perception makes it easy to forget the purpose of knowing and begin worshipping the mind itself.  That's the tendency in this world.  Universities are temples for worship of the rational mind.  This fixation blocks real knowingness.  I'm not saying, Ignore the mind.  We should develop its powers fully.  But if we confine ourselves to the rational mind, we limit our knowledge.

Over-reliance on logical and quantitative methodology is associated with the dominant positivist view of research.  Positivism deeply distrusts intellectual analysis.  Intellectual analysis includes logic, as we've seen, but also imagination, intuition into axioms like intentional action (the basis of Austrian economics), and discovery of new possibilities.  It includes discrimination and creative imagination.  Statistical data and sense perception are important.  They are welcomed in intellectual analysis.  But data are meaningless unless they are understood in terms of intellectual principles.

The essence of positivistic science is that if an hypothesis predicts empirical results, and these results occur, then the hypothesis is confirmed with some degree of probability.  This is correct.  But we've seen that not every sound conclusion can be inferred from empirical data.  The data may run out too soon.  And several different hypotheses may predict the same limited data.  Then other principles have to come into play--intellectual principles.  What kinds of principles are these?  Wholeness and rightness, complementarity and integration of opposites, reduction of tension, reciprocity, simplicity, unification of diversity, and harmonization.

Post-positivism is a contemporary movement, represented by deconstructionism, that criticizes the rational mind for political, gender, race, and class reasons.  We have criticized the rational mind too.  But the thrusts of the two criticisms are different, and the lessons drawn are different.  The thrust of post-positivism is that the rational mind lacks capacities which it plainly possesses.  Our thrust is that the rational mind's capacities of knowledge are valid but limited, and other forms of knowing are at hand.  Post-positivism doesn't acknowledge these new old ways of knowing any more than it acknowledges reason.  It merely relocates the source of reality from the individual to society or culture, to the favored race, gender, class, or political group.  However, there's a reality beyond individuals and cultures, race, gender, and politics.  There's a pre-existing reality, and it is profoundly knowing.

B.  Quantitative and Qualitative Research

Every new way of knowing we experience opens up a new way of research. The dominant research method is to assemble facts, put them in some kind of order, and look for an underlying pattern.  Linear regression in statistics is a big quantitative weapon in this line of research.  This is excellent and productive.  But it doesn't go far enough either. There's research that picks up where quantitative research stops.  There's research to uncover meaning.  Human events are not `explained as long as they are meaningless--even after all the quantities are determined.

To find the meaning in human events we start by researching the context of the events.  We look for relationships.  Suppose we're interested in Anwar Sadat's peace initiatives with the Israelis in the Seventies.  The decisive and cardinal question for determining meaning is always, What were the actors' intentions?  What did Anwar Sadat want to achieve, and why did he want to achieve it?  Why did he think he could achieve it?  How could he have set out against monumental opposition in Egypt and from both Israel and the Arab world, and in the face of world-wide skepticism and cynicism?  What was the internal process that made Sadat willing to make his first overture, and keep pursuing his goal?

To research these questions, we look at the context of Sadat's life, especially the influences on his mind and heart--his ethical training, his religious beliefs, his military experience, his contacts with diplomats, presidents, and premiers, his sense of what is possible with negotiators and feasible with populations, his understanding of the culture and populations of Israel and Egypt, and his conception of leadership.  From all this we may be able to achieve some empathy.  We might piece together the course of experience that led Sadat to form his intention to seek peace and make that decision.  Everything depends on whether we can understand the man and his intentions.

C.  Transcending Aristotelian Thought-Forms in International Relations

International relations are another area where human intentions are of the essence.  Here too quantitative and Aristotelian thought-forms are of limited use.  We need thought-forms structured the same way our world is structured.  We have this in biology.  A chart of the body's metabolic pathways shows an immensely complex network of loops representing interconnected, interdependent chemical reactions whose products all feed back upon each other--what's called a homeostatic circuit.  There are no straight lines in such a chart, and to think in terms of causes and effects makes sense only if we cut out a portion of a circuit and treat it as though it were a whole entity.

Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel Prize in 1974 for expounding economic markets as an ecological, homeostatic system, where human intentions get translated into realistic prices which then feed back into people's intentions.  State interventions in the economy abstract from this organic, looping, feed-back system.  Central planners, Fed bankers, and budget offices think in linear, disconnected, fragmented, Aristotelian models--and disrupt their economies.  Affirmative action programs bring black talent into government and as employees of large corporations, wiping out small and medium-sized black companies.  S&L deposit guarantees brought on a wave of bad debts and bankruptcies wiping out hundreds of billions of tax dollars.

The same is true in international relations.  We aggravate all the problems of international relations because of our inability to perceive context and long-range consequences.  Our information is always incomplete. Natural, biological systems are always more complex and circuitous than our ideas about them--and international relations are even more so, since they include biological beings--humans--who also bring free will to the table.  Using linear, cause-and-effect thinking to map a world that is a complex, interdependent network of feedback circuits involving choices and changes of mind leads to inappropriate actions that return to haunt us.  Such thinking leads us to falsely regard the world as an object that can be manipulated, rather than a home within which we reside.

For instance, it's still conventional to think that ecological values are somehow in conflict with economic values; that we are always faced with either/or choices. This is linear thinking.  The words "ecology" and "economy" share a common root meaning.  They refer to housekeeping and mean study of the house (Greek).  The physiology of the human body, the complexities of family life and community, the realms of domestic and international politics, the network of global trade, and the infinitely varied and delicate interdependencies of the totality of life on Earth, share many structural similarities.  Yet Aristotelian logic treats these concepts as distinct, even to the point that they are studied in compartmentalized and separate departments of the university.

As a university discipline, international relations has failed to achieve the status of a fundamental field of study.  It abstracts international relations from its "house" of rapid global transformation.  This abstraction reduces the global order to formal labels and organizational operations, and emphasizes derivative issues of structure and function.  This has tragic consequences.  The dominant structural-functional categories of explaining the global political system actually hamper the empirical description of them.  By ignoring global transformation, the discipline not only falls short as a theoretical account of international relations;  it also fails practically--it doesn't come to grips with fundamental issues of life and death on a large scale occurring right now.  Loss of contact with reality is tragic here.

D.  How to Achieve Global Understanding

There is also a need for new thinking across the full continuum of violent and peaceful activity, with emphasis on the group and global levels, not only on relations between specific states.  It should encompass a wider span of both space and time than do the more traditional approaches, which generally cover the period since the creation of the nation-state system in 1648.  New thinking should provide greater historical depth while moving forward through a systematic normative study of the future and examining a wider variety of potential alternative world order systems.  To do so, new thinking should incorporate greater diversity not only within the social sciences and humanities, but the natural and physical sciences as well.  Then, we would suggest, the sort of macro-understanding of world affairs sought by scholars of international relations for decades may become possible.

In the process of new thinking, we shift from the truth of reason to the truth of images, from the truth of images to the truth of intuition, from the truth of intuition to the truth of feeling and from the truth of feeling to the truth of pattern.  We shift from truth to truth.  Each one of us possesses a little piece of truth.  Total knowing requires an in-gathering of pieces of truth.
The previous appeared on our web site with permission and by the courtesy of the Center for Global Peace American University, Washington, D.C.

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How Greg Secker Blends Finance and Philanthropy

In a recent interview, English financial expert Greg Secker revealed that his intro to the world of finance came through common interests instead of a clear-cut career path. Secker worked on computers while in college, giving him the incredibly valuable knowledge of learning how to code. His skills would land him his first occupation in the financial sector, where he began working on a digital trading platform.

The resulting success of being involved in finance allowed Greg Secker to retire quite early. By 27, Secker was officially out of the workforce. However, he states that his desire to be productive mixed with seeing other speakers talk convinced him to start doing his own seminars. Through these, Greg Secker has given his own financial advice to thousands of audience members over the past few years.

For a more consolidated look at Greg Secker’s expertise, he has released a book on foreign exchange transactions and how to successfully create income by investing in them. The guide features different ways to get started that can fit the lifestyle of numerous individuals. Secker is now working on a new book that focuses on how to effectively combine business and philanthropy.

Greg Secker is a graduate of the University of Nottingham. He began his career in the field of finance after college by joining Thomas Cook Financial Services. The early experience gave Secker a deep knowledge of the financial market, which he then used to transition over to the business of foreign exchange. He was selected to oversee the first online trading platform that gave quotes for foreign exchange transactions in real time. Greg Secker’s success early on eventually led him to becoming the Vice President of Mellon Financial Corporation at only 25 years old.

In addition to his accomplishments in the business world, Greg Secker has constantly been involved with philanthropy and contributing donations to nonprofit organizations. Secker has even started his own foundation which works with various parts of the community through its different programs. He puts an emphasis on early education and particularly uses his foundation to teach youth valuable career skills.


Algorithms, Generative Art, Machine Agency

In conversation and open discussion with participating festival artists and performers, Vector Co-Curator Martin Zeilinger explores some of the underlying concerns and questions that inform this year’s events: What makes generative art? Can algorithms ever be creative agents? What is the future of the digital as an expressive medium? Featuring Dan BrowneEric FilionKarl FousekJustine Lugli, and Michael Trommer.


Free Case Evaluation

Rights During a Medical Exam

Rights During a Medical Exam

Rights During a Medical Exam

What are your rights during a medical exam for a personal injury defense?

In personal injury lawsuits, the defendant often requests that the plaintiff gets a physical examination from a doctor that the defendant selects. The rules governing this type of lawsuit make it so that you are required to comply with a defendant’s request to see a doctor they choose.

Personal Injury Attorney Chester
While you cannot refuse a medical examination by the defendant’s doctor of choice, you have other responsibilities and rights with regard to the defense medical exam used in the personal injury lawsuit.

Defense medical examination: your rights.

The doctor must treat you with respect.
Because the doctor was hired by the insurance company for the defendant you should not expect him or her to be on your side or try to help you. The doctor should behave professionally and treat you with respect and common courtesy. If the doctor treats you disrespectfully or unprofessionally, you can describe your experience in a letter to your personal injury attorney. Be sure to be specific about the place, time and date of the experience, what happened, and the name of the physician.

You can refuse the following:

To have a doctor xray you.
To have a doctor do blood work, CT scan, fMRI, MRI.
To be given an injection.
To have a doctor do a rectal examination.
To have an examination conducted without a gown.
To have a pin or needle poke you to draw blood.

If you or someone you love is seeking legal advice, we highly recommend the Law Offices of James Adams.

free case evaluation


Defeating the Drought

I heard someone once define drought like this… A drought in your life is whenever you must do without something you need, such as time, energy, money, or support.

There are people all around us that are going through a season of drought…financially, emotionally and maybe even spiritually. They are "doing without" something they need all the time. We have been designed to be fruitful and the multiply. In fact scripture tells us that you will know a believer by their “fruit”. To become fruit-full you have to be full of fruit! This week I will give you some help in defeating the drought and keeping your life saturated with blessings and fruit.

1-cultivate roots
There can be no fruit without roots and the simple fact in ministry and life is that you will need healthy roots when the seasons of drought come. And each of us will face them at some time or another. The deeper the roots, the longer you will be able to survive when your resources are limited. Your roots include your time, energy, talent and money. You will get out of a project, business, church or relationship what you put into it. It's no tthe hours you put in but what you put in the hours. Spend some time today thinking about how you can cultivate better relationships and become servant minded.


Name: _________________________
Date: _________________________

final a

Match the vocabulary words with the definitions on the right.

pneumonia, oklahoma, stigma

_________ An acute or chronic inflammation of the lungs caused by viruses, bacteria or other microorganisms, or sometimes by physical or chemical irritants.
_________ A mark of infamy or disgrace.


Don’t be a bad boss – tips for leadership success

You’ve been promoted and are now leading a team. With a few conscious reminders you can become a respected and successful boss and avoid falling into bad habits that will harm your career
, says recruiting experts Hays.

 “As a new leader, it’s all too easy to slip unconsciously into poor behaviours without realising it,” says Christine Wright, Operations Director of Hays. “Sometimes people are so keen to prove their leadership skills and make a difference that they forget to stop and think. This leads to poor leadership, which impacts their team and leads to rising turnover. It also has a negative impact on their career prospects longer-term.

“A few conscious reminders can help new leaders avoid falling into such unconscious leadership mistakes,” she said.

According to Hays, respected and successful bosses are:

1. Unique when they lead: “Don’t just try to replicate others,” says Christine. “As a new leader, you need to find your own way; breaking free from stereotypical leadership behaviours marks out a good leader from an average or poor one. So find time to assess your behaviour objectively. Consider your leadership performance in terms of coercion, reward and inspiration. Aim to be a role model who uses your own unique expertise to lead and inspire your team.”

2. Aware of stress triggers: According to Christine, it pays to learn what triggers you to become stressed. “When stressed we do not always make a rational decision but can instead react emotionally. But if you know your stress triggers, you can modify your behaviour and remain calm under pressure. It’s also important to recognise these triggers in your team so you can predict their likely responses and provide assistance when necessary.”

3. Seek out honest feedback: “Leaders are often surrounded by ‘yes’ people who tell you what you want to hear,” Christine says. “So seek out appraisals from trusted contacts inside and outside the business who will talk to you honestly. This will keep you grounded as they will point out objectively what’s happening, what’s going wrong and whether you are part of the problem. 360-degree appraisals can also provide feedback on how your team members feel they are led.”

4. Think globally: “Today’s leaders need to be able to work seamlessly across different cultures. In our globalised economy, good leaders avoid the narrow-minded view that if an approach works in their country it will work in another. Cultural sensitivity is an important competency for leaders today,” says Christine.

5. Exercise: “It can be difficult to find the time to exercise when you take over a new job and are keen to spend long hours at your desk achieving results, but keeping yourself and your brain healthy will build personal resilience and enhance decision-making capabilities and effectiveness,” Christine says. “So get a proper nights sleep and exercise regularly. This will make you a better leader who is less likely to make an irrational or emotional decision.”

This issue is explored further in the latest Hays Journal, the recruiter’s bi-annual magazine on the world of HR and recruitment.  To access the Hays Journal please visit:

Search for jobs


Often when I eat spicy/hot foods I have a bowel movement later it comes out just as hot & very painful. Is there a reason for this/way to avoid this?

Avoid spicy foods. Sometimes this can be from active hemorrhoids or the medical condition pruritus ani. Spicy foods often have an ingredient capsaicin which can set off the p nerve fibers in the body. It seems that some people have more sensitive nerve fibers in their body and the capsaicin found in hot peppers triggers this.


Smart Flow Blog

My Veterinary Bucket list

Along with the heartbreak of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami came the opportunity to jump on a plane and help the animals left on the ground in Sri Lanka, via a program with the WorldAnimal Protection (formerly the WSPA). Tick!

After a few more trips to Indonesia and Thailand where I was part of ‘catch-neuter-release’ programs, I was asked to join Act Asia’s "Train the Trainer" program where I lectured and demonstrated feline desexing programs across Shenzhen and Beijing. Tick Tick Tick

Then Black Saturday happened.

In 7 February 2009, after years of drought and three consecutive days above 43 °C (109 °F), with the temperature peaking at 45.1 °C (113.2 °F), a series of bushfires burned across the Australian state of Victoria.

It was a total role reversal from the Fatal Aussie Animal Pride everyone normally associates with our animals down under.  Birds fell from the sky, possums and koala’s were falling out of trees. Any wallabies and Kangaroos that survived suffered horrendous burns to their feet and all species faced inevitable death from dehydration and starvation if they were not rescued.  The next 6 weeks of my life made my bucket list complete.

So what’s on your bucket list?


Genes for IQ finally found…what’s next

There have been some recent developments in genome-wide association study (GWAS) pertaining to IQ and academic achievement:

These studies specifically concern Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs), which are variations in a single nucleotide that occur at a specific position in the genome. A wide range of human diseases, e.g. sickle-cell anemia, β-thalassemia and cystic fibrosis result from SNPs.

A locus (plural loci), in genetics, is the specific location or position of a gene, DNA sequence, on a chromosome. Each chromosome carries many genes; humans’ estimated ‘haploid’ protein coding genes are 20,000-25,000, on the 23 different chromosomes.

Additional information:

Brief Summary: Genes for IQ finally found

Paper from Nature: Genome-wide association study of cognitive functions and educational attainment in UK Biobank (N =112 151)

In response to these findings, West Hunt poses the question:

People are doing GWAS studies on alleles that influence educational achievement – IQ alleles, more or less – and are finding some. Once you find them, the natural question is how the frequencies of those vary in different populations. Do populations that test low on IQ have fewer plus alleles than those that test high?

As the title implies, either we don’t know or the research is liable to being suppressed. Once genetic markers are identified, the natural question is whether they vary between different groups (races), if some groups have more markers for high IQ than others, and then inevitably you enter the minefield of race and IQ. The research suggests that some groups may be less or more intelligent than others (as measured by IQ tests) but genetic data to confirm this would be a setback for various political interests.

To quote Andrew Sullivan, ‘p.c. egalitarianism’ may be hindering much-needed research in this field.


Harlequin Marquise Chair

Archive This Item?

A pretty Louis 15 style, late 19th century gilt wood harlequin marquise chair. The bergère and stool are not an exact match but they have been paired and upholstered for the same home to create a marquise. A lovely touch of French glamour for any livingroom or bedroom.


How humans will turn into gods

From Natural Selection to Intelligent Design

On a grander scale, geneticists have already managed to engineer genius mice that display improved memory and learning skills, and super-worms that live up to six times their normal lifespan. There is no technical reason why we could not start engineering superhumans too. Within a century or even a few decades, genetic engineering and other forms of biological engineering might enable us to make far-reaching alterations not only to our physiology, immune system, and life expectancy, but also to our intellectual and emotional capacities.

The second way that intelligent design might replace natural selection is even more radical. Instead of limiting themselves to working with organic structures, future designers might well use inorganic parts as well, and engineer cyborgs. Cyborgs are living beings combining organic with inorganic parts, such as a human with bionic hands.
In a sense, nearly all of us are bionic these days, since our natural senses and cognitive skills are supplemented by devices such as eyeglasses, pacemakers, and computers. However, in the medium future this process is likely to go much further. We may start having more and more inorganic devices connected directly to our bodies. Devices that will be inseparable from us and that will change our abilities, desires, personalities, and identities in a fundamental way.

There are already working prototypes of bionic ears, eyes and limbs, which can be connected directly to the brain. These devices are currently used to overcome disabilities, but they might soon begin to be used to upgrade abilities. Below is a photograph of Jesse Sullivan holding hands with Claudia Mitchell. Jesse and Mitchell lost their arms in accidents, and are now using bionic arms, which are operated by thought alone. Neural signals arriving from the brain are translated by micro-computers into electrical commands, and the arms move accordingly. When Jesse and Claudia want to raise their arms, they do what any normal person unconsciously does—and the arms rise.

At present these bionic arms are a poor replacement for our organic originals, but they have the potential for unlimited development. Bionic arms, for example, could be made far more powerful than the organic arms even of the world’s boxing champion. Bionic arms could be replaced every few years, or upgraded when a new model is developed. They could also be detached from the body and operated at a distance. And they could be multiplied at will. You could have six of them, like some Hindu goddess, instead of the miserly two of mere mortals.

Meanwhile, nanotechnology experts are developing a bionic immune system composed of millions of nano-robots, who would inhabit our bodies, open blocked blood vessels, fight viruses and bacteria, eliminate cancerous cells, and even reverse aging processes. Even more revolutionary projects aim to create direct two-way brain-computer interfaces that will allow computers to read the electrical signals of a human brain, simultaneously transmitting signals that the brain can read. Such interfaces can link a brain directly to the internet, or to directly link several brains to each other, thereby creating a sort of inter-brain-net. Nobody knows what might be the impact on human consciousness and human identity.

Finally, intelligent design might dispense with organic components altogether, and engineer completely non-organic beings. The Human Brain Project, launched in 2005, hopes to recreate a complete human brain inside a computer, with electronic circuits in the computer emulating neural networks in the brain. The project’s director has claimed that, if funded properly, within a decade or two we could have an artificial human brain inside a computer that could feel, talk and behave very much as a human does. If successful, that would mean that after four billion years of milling around inside the small world of organic compounds, life will suddenly break out into the vastness of the inorganic realm, ready to take up shapes beyond our wildest dreams.

Not all scholars agree that the brain works in a manner analogous to today’s digital computers, so it is not at all clear if you could ever create a living brain inside a computer. However, in April 2013 the European Union selected the Human Brain Project to be its scientific flagship, giving it a grant of more than €1 billion. The Europeans, it seems, must be taking this possibility very seriously.

True, the administrators of the European Union not always succeed in forecasting the future accurately. And it would indeed be surprising if all the above forecasts are realized in full. History teaches us that what seems to be just around the corner may never materialize due to unforeseen barriers, and that other unimagined scenarios will in fact come to pass. After Hiroshima and Sputnik, many began to speculate that by the year 2000, nuclear-powered space colonies will pepper the Moon, Mars and even Pluto. It didn’t happen. On the other hand, nobody foresaw the Internet, which is much more amazing then flying to Mars.

So it is best to regard the above forecasts not as prophecies, but as stimulants for our imagination. We cannot be certain how soon and in what ways the regime of natural selection will be overthrown, but we must start thinking very seriously how to run a world governed by intelligent design. Humans are likely to upgrade themselves into gods, able to shape and reshape their bodies, their minds, and the bodies and minds of other life forms. Hence the most important question facing humankind today is “What do we want to become?”. And since we might soon be able to design our desires too, the real question facing us is: “What do we want to want?” Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven’t given it enough thought.

Excerpt from chapter 20, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind


Monday, 10 June 2013

Sorting Algorithms

Popular sorting algorithms

1 Bubble sort
2 Selection sort
3 Insertion sort
4 Shell sort
5 Comb sort
6 Merge sort
7 Heapsort
8 Quicksort
9 Counting sort
10 Bucket sort
11 Radix sort
12 Distribution sort

1) Bubble sort
:Bubble sort is a simple sorting algorithm. The algorithm starts at the beginning of the data set. It compares the first two elements, and if the first is greater than the second, it swaps them. It continues doing this for each pair of adjacent elements to the end of the data set. It then starts again with the first two elements, repeating until no swaps have occurred on the last pass. This algorithm's average and worst case performance is O(n2), so it is rarely used to sort large, unordered, data sets. Bubble sort can be used to sort a small number of items (where its asymptotic inefficiency is not a high penalty). Bubble sort can also be used efficiently on a list of any length that is nearly sorted (that is, the elements are not significantly out of place).

4) Shell sort

5) Comb sort :Comb sort is a relatively simple sorting algorithm originally designed by Wlodzimierz Dobosiewicz in 1980.Later it was rediscovered and popularized by Stephen Lacey and Richard Box with a Byte Magazine article published in April 1991. Comb sort improves on bubble sort. The basic idea is to eliminate turtles, or small values near the end of the list, since in a bubble sort these slow the sorting down tremendously.

6) Merge sort :Merge sort takes advantage of the ease of merging already sorted lists into a new sorted list. It starts by comparing every two elements (i.e., 1 with 2, then 3 with 4...) and swapping them if the first should come after the second. It then merges each of the resulting lists of two into lists of four, then merges those lists of four, and so on; until at last two lists are merged into the final sorted list. Of the algorithms described here, this is the first that scales well to very large lists, because its worst-case running time is O(n log n). Merge sort has seen a relatively recent surge in popularity for practical implementations, being used for the standard sort routine in the programming languages Perl, Python (as timsort), and Java (also uses timsort as of JDK7), among others. Merge sort has been used in Java at least since 2000 in JDK1.3

8) Quicksort
:Quicksort is a divide and conquer algorithm which relies on a partition operation: to partition an array an element called a pivot is selected. All elements smaller than the pivot are moved before it and all greater elements are moved after it. This can be done efficiently in linear time and in-place. The lesser and greater sublists are then recursively sorted. Efficient implementations of quicksort (with in-place partitioning) are typically unstable sorts and somewhat complex, but are among the fastest sorting algorithms in practice. Together with its modest O(log n) space usage, quicksort is one of the most popular sorting algorithms and is available in many standard programming libraries. The most complex issue in quicksort is choosing a good pivot element; consistently poor choices of pivots can result in drastically slower O(n²) performance

11) Radix sort
:Radix sort is an algorithm that sorts numbers by processing individual digits. n numbers consisting of k digits each are sorted in O(n · k) time. Radix sort can process digits of each number either starting from the least significant digit (LSD) or starting from the most significant digit (MSD). The LSD algorithm first sorts the list by the least significant digit while preserving their relative order using a stable sort. Then it sorts them by the next digit, and so on from the least significant to the most significant, ending up with a sorted list. While the LSD radix sort requires the use of a stable sort, the MSD radix sort algorithm does not (unless stable sorting is desired). In-place MSD radix sort is not stable. It is common for the counting sort algorithm to be used internally by the radix sort. Hybrid sorting approach

12) Distribution sort :Distribution sort refers to any sorting algorithm where data are distributed from their input to multiple intermediate structures which are then gathered and placed on the output. For example, both bucket sort and flashsort are distribution based sorting algorithms.


The purpose of the M. Home Centre is to be built as part of the set 'M. Home Set' It is often used by players to increase the size of rooms. The centre-piece is a tool, with four pillars, one in each corner, and can be rotated when being placed.

This recipe is the same as the 'Mine' recipe and is the same for all five pieces of the set.

  1. Two 'Med Rock'.
  2. One 'Wall'.

Ad blocker interference detected!


I-X Center
The International Exposition Center, also known as the I-X Center, is a convention and exhibition hall located in Cleveland, Ohio, adjacent to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. The 2,200,000-square-foot (204,000 m 2) building includes over 1 million total square feet of exhibition and conference space, making it one of the largest meeting, convention, and exhibition centers in the United States. The diverse show schedule includes public events featuring one of the country's largest boat shows, Trade Show 200 events, banquets and meetings attracting over 2 million visitors each year. Originally located within Brook Park, Ohio, the building and 90 acres (36 ha) of neighboring land became part of Cleveland in a 2001 land swap that sent most of the NASA Glenn Research Center to Brook Park.

It was built in 1942 as a General Motors-operated factory and was used to build bombers during World War II as the Cleveland Bomber Plant. For a time, it built the wing assembly for the B-29, then the experimental XP-75. It later served for many years as a tank factory. The M41 Walker Bulldog, M56 Scorpion, M114, the MOG Howitzer, and the M551 Sheridan were built at the facility. It was vacant from 1970 to 1977, when it was purchased by Park Corp. with the intention of converting it into an exhibition hall. It re-opened in 1985 as the I-X Center. The Park Corp. sold the building to the City of Cleveland in 2001, but continues to lease and operate it. In 1990, the I-X Center was used as a temporary high school for North Olmsted High School. On September 16th, 1990, two students burned down the front of the high school, causing significant damage. The building's 125-foot (38 m) high ferris wheel premiered at the 1992 Greater Cleveland Auto Show. At the time it was the world's highest indoor ferris wheel. Today it is a centerpiece of the annual IX Indoor Amusement Park.

2008 expansion
A 2008 expansion added 185,000 square feet (17,200 m 2) of exhibition space, increasing the exhibition floor to 985,000 square feet (91,500 m 2). The entire ceiling was repainted for the first time since 1984, using 27,000 gallons of paint.


10 self–promotion tips that aren’t sleazy

Self-promotion, It’s the ultimate dilemma for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and individuals.

You don’t want to be pushy salesman … but you don’t have a marketing department like Google, Apple, Sony and many others. I mean, if you don’t tell people about your product, service, or idea … who will?

Self–promotion is a requirement, but there are so many areas where you can go wrong that it becomes difficult to stay true to yourself. What you need are networking tips that actually work.

The good news? It is possible to self–promote without ruining your reputation. Here are 10 ways to self–promote that will always work and will never come across as sleazy.

1. Be excited.

Is this something that you genuinely want to promote? If not, why are you doing it? We’re all looking for a story we can follow: a product we can trust, a person we can believe in. Genuine enthusiasm and excitement shows that you are that person. You’re the story they have been waiting for. People naturally gravitate towards stories that are promoted with passion and enthusiasm. It’s the energy that draws people in. If you don’t believe in your product, service, or idea … how is anyone else supposed to believe in it?

2. Help someone else.

Do you know why people who volunteer are awesome? Because volunteers give even when they know they won’t get anything in return. What if you took the same approach to business? How much easier would it be for people to help you? How willing would they be to spread your message if you spent most of your time meeting their needs? People do business with those that they know and trust. There is no better way to build trust than to help others without expecting anything in return. Promotion is easy when good will is abundant.

3. Listen more.

A large part of successful self-promotion comes from framing your message in the right way. If you listen more, then you’ll have a much better chance of understanding what is important to people. If you know what’s important to them, then you know how to pitch your product, service, or idea to them. Find out what they enjoy and what they despise. Take some time to hear their story.

4. Don’t try to be someone you’re not.

If you’re not the outgoing and boisterous type, then don’t try to be. If you can’t play the whole we’re–best–friends–even–though–we–just–met game, then don’t fake it. Self–promotion should be about promoting who you are and what you stand for. If you’re insincere, people can smell it from a mile away. In other words, self–promotion should be about promoting yourself and not someone you’re pretending to be.

5. Don’t act like the world owes you something.

You know what people hate? People who expect the world to roll out the red carpet for them. People who did one great thing and try to ride that out for years. People who feel like they deserve better because they want it instead of working for it. You know what people love? People who smile when they could complain. People who think of others when they could think of themselves. People who keep working when they’ve earned the right to stop. People who remain humble and respectful regardless of their success. Check your ego at the door and lose the sense of entitlement. You’ll gain a lot of fans when you stop acting like you should have them.

6. Don’t “hope” for the best.

The best self–promoters are go–getters. They get in the thick of things. They make things happen. They work when everyone else is sleeping. Here’s a real surprise: if you want to promote something, you have to actually promote it. All of that work you put in to building your brand, creating your product, or learning your craft? Well, that’s just half the battle. When you’re big like Microsoft, your job is to run the business. When you’re small, your job is to tell people about it. Yes, it’s your responsibility to talk about your work.

7. Introduce two people.

Here’s an easy way to get two people to talk about you: introduce them to each other. When you’re the mutual connection, it’s natural for the two of them to discuss what you’re up to. This makes self–promotion easy and it is another way that you can provide value to people in your network.

8. Create the world’s greatest widget.

The phrase “self–promotion” has a bad reputation because people often use it as a way to promote terrible products, services or other self–serving ideas. The number one way to become an amazing self–promoter is to build something that promotes itself. If you actually solve a real need, then people will talk about it. If you actually help someone achieve a goal, then people will talk about it. If you actually make people happy, then people will talk about it. In the beginning, nobody will know about your product no matter how great it is, but it’s so much easier to gain a following and become a successful self–promoter if you create a product, service, or idea that speaks for itself.

9. Realize that it is about value, not experience.

When you’re self–promoting, the first move for many people is to start touting all of the experience they have.
“I’ve worked in advertising for 17 years.”

“I have 6 years of graphic design experience.”

“I’ve been helping retail businesses for 12 years now.”

I know that I’ve made this mistake before as well, but it’s remarkable how often people talk about how long they have been doing something rather than what type of value they can provide. And guess what? Nobody cares how long you’ve been selling trinkets.
If you’re going to promote something, then show specific results instead of making generic statements. Put a number to your work. Proof is the strongest promotional tool you have. How much can you increase sales by? How much money can you save someone? What is the math that shows why your idea is better? Numbers and results offer clear proof of why you and your idea are better than the rest. How much easier is it to promote something if you have proof of how it provides value?

10. Stop sprinting, start walking.

Slow down. Life is a long race.

Michael Resendes

Michael Resendes is the Vice President of Atlas Studios; a Web Development and Marketing Firm based in Rhode Island. He is also the creator of Rhode Island Networking Events.
  • jon terns

    These are some of the best tips I have seen and it makes me remember all of the times that someone has come up to me networking and failed at it. These mistakes are easily taken care of and as long as people read your post, they should do well.

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Simatic standard software

Xem 1-6 trên 6 kết quả Simatic standard software

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  • Ebook Simatic System Software for S7-300/400 System and Standard Functions Volume 1/2 provides you with a comprehensive overview of the organization blocks (ob), system functions (sfc), system and standard function blocks (sfc), and iec functions contained in the operating systems of the cpus of the s7 300 and s7 400, diagnostic data, system status lists (szl), and events.

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  • This manual provides you with a comprehensive overview of the organization blocks (OB), system functions (SFC), system and standard function blocks (SFC), and IEC functions contained in the operating systems of the CPUs of the S7-300 and S7-400. The appendix describes the diagnostic data, system status lists (SZL), and events.

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  • Ebook Simatic S7-SCL V5.3 for S7-300/400 provides you with a complete overview of programming with s7 scl. It supports you during the installation and setting up of the software. It includes explanations of how to create a program, the structure of user programs, and the individual language elements.

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The Doctor’s Companion Ep. 205 – Time Traveling Without an Anchor

doctorscompanionrssThe Teller is eating memories but Scott, Cassandra and Nick can’t shuttity up up up about the Series 8 episode “Time Heist”. The Doctor and Clara suddenly find themselves embroiled in a intergalactic bank heist with no memory of how they got involved. Who is the mysterious figure responsible for putting the heist together known only as the Architect? Why are Clara and the Doctor working with a cyborg and a shapeshifter? What are they even being sent into the bank to steal? Find out in the latest episode of The Doctor’s Companion! And remember, BEWARE OF SPOILERS!!

NEXT: “The Caretaker”!!


What is Lenticel? - QS Study
QS Study

Lenticel: The lense shaped pores which are found in the bark of woody plants are said to be Lenticels.

Formation of lenticel:

(i) Cork cambium in some places instead of producing phellem cells, gives rise to thin walled, loosely arranged irregular shaped parenchymatous cells with sufficient inter-cellular spaces.

(ii) These parenchymatous cells exert pressure and as a result epidermis against it ruptures and forms lense-shaped pores.

(iii) The whole area thus formed is known as lenticel.

(iv) The thin walled parenchymatous cells of a lenticel are said to be complementary cells.

(i) Gaseous exchange between air and internal tissues of a plant occurs through lenticel.

(ii) Often, transpiration in a small scale may take place through lenticel.


Men Turning 30

I remember, as a guy, as I turned 30, I found some challenges that I wasn’t expecting to deal with.

I realised that as I looked back on my twenties, there were some stories that had repeated over and over again which were not serving me.

I realised that I needed to confront these stories and make a change.

It turns out it’s really easy to feel lost around this age, as you try to figure out who you are in a more ‘permanent’ context.

The twenties is a time of experimentation and you have the perception of having all the time in the world.

However this changes as you approach, reach, and transition through 30 and you recognise some important things.

A man going through this transition will

- Begin to look back on the past decade and usually see’s a number of things that did not come to fruition the way he thought

- He recognises that his focus must become a LOT more long term

- He starts to wrestle more heavily with the idea of his own mortality, and finite time on earth

- He can feel lost, confused and may experience a deep lack of purpose and confusion about his own identity

- For the first time in a long time he might start to ask deeper questions about who he is and what he stands for and actually begin to MEAN IT

- He may lie awake at night, wondering what he is going to do with his life, or if his life holds meaning at all

If he moves through this transition successfully -

- He will begin to develop a more stable ‘code’ of character and operations for his life, he will become significantly clearer on his values, his beliefs and what he is looking for out of life.

This process can be interrupted — and often is.

The reason is because to successfully complete it, a man will need to actually face certain truths about himself.

Accepting or deciding your values means that you will then have to live up to them, which is difficult.

To align your life to these new emerging values — you will need often need to make big decisions.

In my own life, I had to accept that I needed to leave a business that was not in alignment with who I was, and shift.

This was a painful experience and was not without it’s costs.

The opportunity is to re-craft your identity and to define the guy that you want to be moving forward into the next 2 decades of your life (30–50).

It is a tremendous one.

You are more mature, you have experience under your belt and you have wisdom.

You have also likely made some mistakes and are carrying some baggage, and this is an issue that you’ll need to deal with.

If you wish to fully succeed in your life — you will probably need to rediscover your capacity to take risks in the pursuit of what you want.

Old excuses and stories which held you back in the past will have to go, you will need to let go of what other people think, and yet you should expect to be held to account, either by yourself or by those around you — because there will be less room to hide from your repeated mistakes in those places that you have refused to grow in the past.

It’s a challenging time for a man to navigate, but it’s also an exceptional opportunity, and a crucial one if you wish to live an amazing life.

Treat it wisely.

One clap, two clap, three clap, forty?