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7 Steps to Making Your Future Clearer and Brighter

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 11:35:16 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Along with lack of motivation, such factors as vagueness, uncertainty and lack of clarity are among the key reasons of our bad habits, discouragement and procrastination. For those who are determined to fight with these problems and look for positive changes in their life, I would like to offer a strategy created by Dr. Brian Tracy, an experienced time management specialist, lecturer and business coach, who wrote several books of special techniques and recommendations for those who suffer from chronic procrastination and lack of personal effectiveness. He argues that everyone who wants to be successful in this world has to define own goals and aspirations. This can be done in the following 7 steps:

Step 1. Decide

Step 2. Think on paper

Step 3. Estimate an optimistic deadline and a pessimistic deadline for your goals

Step 4. Think about everything you need to do, learn or accomplish in order to achieve your goals

Step 5. Organize

Step 6. Take action!

Step 7. Make a habit of doing something

Tags: mind, clarity

Bail Out won't save American Economy

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 09:02:46 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Best spend it on a national health system. That's what each American could get for the 3,000 dollars they are being asked to pay to save themselves from poverty.

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

There is a simple reason why US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's $700bn bail-out package has been so hard to sell to politicians and the American people: it won't really work. Despite the historically massive expenditure and all the little clauses to make sure Wall Street fat cats get their comeuppance, the plan is unlikely to do anything to save the world's biggest economy from a long and crippling downturn.

You can always rely on 'Neutron Jack' Welch, the former GE boss and all-round tough talker, to tell it how it is. 'I now believe we are in for one hell of a deep downturn,' he told the World Business Forum in New York last Wednesday, adding that the first quarter of 2009 will be 'brutal'.

Until recently, Welch said, he had believed the American economy could avoid recession, but he has changed his mind, despite the bail-out. 'I am now caving,' he said. 'Get ready for real tough times. They're coming.'

Tags: economics

Milestones in Wildlife Photography

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 01:28:16 GMT

clipped by: sahara

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

The July 1906 issue of National Geographic featured its first ever wildlife photographs. Editor Gil Grosvenor printed 74 photos snapped by U.S. Representative and early conservationist George Shiras, beginning a long tradition of featuring wildlife photos in the magazine.

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

Tags: nature, art

Diamonds May Be Life's Birthstone

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:46:31 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: A good read if interested in how life began.

Clip Source: www.space.com

One of the hurdles in origin-of-life theories is that the pieces that make up complex biomolecules do not readily come together by themselves. A group of scientists proposes that diamonds provided a kind of "workbench" for biomolecule manufacturing on early Earth.

Not long after its formation, our planet was — according to astrobiologists — awash in a primordial soup that contained the rudimentary ingredients of life. The fly in the "soup" theory, however, is that the small molecular bits likely needed outside help in order to latch together into the long, complex biomolecules that living organisms use.

Some scientists have suggested that the surfaces of minerals on the early Earth provided an organizing platform upon which the building blocks of life could assemble. Recent studies of diamond suggest that its surface would be especially good for this.

discovered that a certain type of diamond, called hydrogenated diamond, imposes a rigid order on molecules near its surface. They suggest,

Tags: the, uncle, of, someone, i, know

The Whitehouse Coup of 1933

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 02:47:14 GMT

clipped by: sahara

Clip Source: www.bbc.co.uk

The Whitehouse Coup

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

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Tags: economy, politics, history

Quotations about Life

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:40:08 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee,
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
~ Robert Frost

Lots more at the source.

Clip Source: www.quotegarden.com

Quotations about Life

The purpose of life is a life of purpose.

Life is simple, its just not easy.

A life without cause is a life without effect.

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't.

Life's not always fair.

I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.

In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.

Life is the hyphen between matter and spirit.

My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot.

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

I think I've discovered the secret of life - you just hang around until you get used to it.

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.

Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once.

We are born wet, naked, and hungry. Then things get worse.

Life is what we make it

The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

10 easy steps to facism

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 04:44:49 GMT

clipped by: prin1

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.

2. Create a gulag.

3. Develop a thug caste.

4. Set up an internal surveillance system.

5. Harass citizens' groups.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.

7. Target key individuals.

8. Control the press.

9. Dissent equals treason.

10. Suspend the rule of law.

Creating a terrifying threat -- hydralike, secretive, evil -- is an old trick.

Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law

where torture can take place.

When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorize citizens

The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.

Financial crisis the result of Reaganomics

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 23:51:17 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: A brief history of economic policies since the New Deal, and why we've had crises like this ever since Reagan. "Obama is correct that the best opportunity for making the economy work for all Americas is to fire those who made up the current rules of the game."

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Today's financial crisis is the predictable

outcome of the policies enacted by the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan's presidency

When Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, the nation was in the midst of a banking meltdown

the hallmarks of the New Deal were designed specifically to curb speculation,

and protect ordinary Americans from becoming collateral damage of Wall Street's predators

In the 1970s

economies stagnated

advocates of the free market

insisted that excessive business regulation and high taxes were the problem

Reagan

slashed taxes on the wealthy, cutting social spending

appointed zealots of deregulation

lax regulation by Reagan's SEC create

the 1987 market plunge, the first

since the 1929 crash

Reagan gloried in

deregulation of the Savings and Loan

more than 1,000 savings and loan institutions collapsed

American taxpayer bailed them out in 1989

each generation of Republicans carrying it to a further extreme. John McCain reiterated at the first debate

he is a proud

Reagan conservative

Tags: economy, republican, reagan

Learning From Mistakes Only Works After Age 12, Study Suggests

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:14:07 GMT

clipped by: Kelika
clipper's remarks: "There is also an area of the brain that responds strongly to positive feedback: the basal ganglia, just outside the cerebral cortex. The activity of this area of the brain does not change. It remains active in all age groups: in adults, but also in children, both eight-year-olds and twelve-year-olds."

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

In children aged 8 to 9, the areas of the brain involved in cognitive control show strong activation following positive feedback. This is no longer the case with 12-year-olds. (Credit: Image courtesy of Leiden University)

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2008) — Eight-year-old children have a radically different learning strategy from twelve-year-olds and adults. Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback ('Well done!'), whereas negative feedback ('Got it wrong this time') scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring. Twelve-year-olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes. Adults do the same, but more efficiently.

In children of eight and nine, these areas of the brain react strongly to positive feedback and scarcely respond at all to negative feedback

in children of 12 and 13,

Their 'control centres' in the brain are more strongly activated by negative feedback and much less by positive feedback.

Tags: brain