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Almost all the interviews ends with this simple question and the interviewers gives a chance to the candidate to ask for any clarity on things discussed in the interview, or just to give the impression that we are done and if you do not have any question then let's call it a day.
Almost 90% candidates answer this question with "no thank you".
But that should not be it, majority of the interviewers do have something in mind to ask this particular question. Most of the interviewers are checking interest of the candidate in the job and position he/she is interviewed for, and some are checking level of professionalism in the candidate that the candidate is interested in.
Even out of those 10% remaining candidates who do ask a question or two when given a chance at the end of interview, they ask about the salary or benefits or job description etc.
In my opinions, one must balance his/her interest and interviewer's interest and ask something about organization's or project's future expansion, to ask about job enrichment and to let the interviewer know what else you are good at. And in personal interest, you can ask about leave encashment at the end of contract or the life insurance etc.
Please do not bother to ask about salary package as no one is going to disclose the salary package and you will get a smart answer "our salary package is not fixed and we will have to work on your salary and work history, then we will let you know soon" and you will miss the golden chance of showing your abilities and keen interest, on the other hand, interviewer will not have a good impression of yours to conclude the interview.
I will strongly suggest everyone to make the most out of this closing question.Writer: Shahzad Ulla Khattak Senior Manager HR & Admin at USAID's Conflict Victims Support Program Implemented by International Relief and Development (IRD) Contact at: firstname.lastname@example.com Linkedin: Shahzad Ullah Khattak


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Sock Monkey Party Ideas
Celebrate your next occasion with a retro fun Sock Monkey Party! Nobody knows the exact origin of these fun and funny toys made from red heeled socks, but instructions for making the funny monkey have been packaged with Red Heel socks since 1955. Of course, you don't have to make your own sock monkey to enjoy this theme, though. Here's how to throw a sock monkey party perfect for children's birthdays and baby showers. Invite guests to "swing on by" for food, fun, and some monkeying around.
- Sock Monkey Party Supplies
- Invitations
- Sock Monkey Party Decorations
- Monkey Party Food
- Monkeying Around (Games)
- Monkey Puzzles (Crafts)
- Goody Bags
Today, Fox River Mills of Iowa makes the socks, as well as the Sock Monkeys, which you can buy to this day. There's also a festival every March in Rockford, Illinois, where the socks were originally made.
The party pack comes with great sock monkey themed invitations. I myself have bought custom invitations from Ebay with no problems. There's people who offer their artistic and printing services and will print up and mail you custom invitations. Check out the listings for Sock Monkey personalized invitations and try it out!
If you want to try making your own creative invitations, here are a couple of ideas.
Banana peels
Make cute invitations shaped like bananas. Cut two pieces from construction paper–the banana peel and the banana. Use a hole punch to punch a hole in the top of both pieces and secure the pieces together with a brass brad so that the "peel" (the top part) will move from above the banana (the bottom part). Write the party details on the banana.
Monkey faces
Make a monkey face invitation with "mouth" that opens up to show party invitation details. Look for clipart and printables online to create your one of a kind invitation.
Sock Monkey Party Decorations
You can't go wrong by starting with the Sock Monkey Party Kit from Birthday Express. This kit has everything you need to get the party started, including the essential plates, cups, place mats, birthday candles, curling ribbon, balloons, a tablecloth, and more. They've paired the cute Sock Monkey face with a red and white polka dot pattern, which gives us some other ideas for cute decorations.
Other fun ideas:
Color-coordinate with your sock monkey decorations by adding extra touches for a festive party. Choose decorations in red, white, and black colors for accents.
- Balloon bouquets: These are always a festive addition to party decorations. Plain-colored latex balloons pair well with foil or mylar balloons. Bunch at least five to seven latex balloons with each foil balloon.
- Polka dot ribbons: Use polka dot ribbons for accents throughout your decor. Use them to tie labels on goody bags, party treats, and craft stations.
- Sock monkeys: Make or buy sock monkeys and use them on the party table and in other prominent locations.
- Red pompoms: Take a cue from sock monkeys and make red pompoms to hang around the house in between the streamers and crepe paper.
Monkey Party Food
Banana splits
What's better for a monkey party than banana splits? Make sure you have all of the toppings handy for scrumptious sundaes: hot fudge, pineapple, strawberry, caramel, butterscotch, chopped peanuts, whipped cream and cherries! Don't peel and split the bananas until you're ready serve them, or the bananas will turn brown.
Monkey munchies
Make a buffet of yummy treats. Include banana chips, monkey vines (red licorice), root beer barrels, malt balls, and other tasty snacks.
Chocolate covered bananas
If banana splits are a bit over the top for you, make chocolate covered bananas ahead of time. Leave some plain and dip some in chopped peanuts.
Monkeying Around (Games)
Pin the Tail on the Monkey
Just like "pin the tail on the donkey" you can play this game with a sock monkey or a paper cutout of a monkey. If you play with a real sock monkey, use velcro for the tails. If you use a paper cutout, pre-tape the monkey tails. Put a bandana on each player and spin him or her around three times before letting them go!
Toss the Banana
You can play this two ways: as a toss (like an egg toss with partners) or throwing the banana through a ring.
Barrel of Monkeys
Whomever makes the longest monkey chain wins the prize!
- Look for Barrel of Monkeys games at Amazon
Monkey Puzzles (Crafts)
Sock Monkey Puppets
Encourage guests to make their own monkeys to take home. Get brown paper lunch bags for the puppet body. Cut out the parts to the monkey face out of construction paper ahead of time. Provide glue sticks for gluing everything together.
Or, if your party guests are particularly young, glue the monkey faces on the bags before the party, and let guests add accessories of party hats and clothes to the puppets. Make sure to provide googly eyes and red pompoms for the monkey hats!
- You can also find a puppet monkey kit here
Sock Monkey Dress Up
You can make your own sock monkeys by following the instructions here (the original) or here (a craft with pictorials). Or, to make it easy on yourself, you can buy sock monkeys at Amazon and provide a variety of fun bits of fabric, little party hats, and other fun supplies for the little ones to dress up their monkeys. Check craft supplies stores for interesting accessories.
Monkey Cookie Decorating
We're big fans of cookie decorating! Sure, it's messy, but it is also lots of fun. Make monkey-shaped and banana-shaped sugar cookies. Provide icing and sugar sprinkles in shades of red, white, brown, and yellow. Get ready for a tasty mess! (You can find cookie cutters on Amazon)
Monkey Masks
Make monkey masks out of paper plates. Before guests arrive, cut holes for the eyes and glue tongue depressors for handles at the bottom of the back side of the plates. This gives guests a head start on the craft. Depending on the age of the party guests, you can pre-cut the rest of the pieces of the monkey faces so that guests can just glue the masks together. Cut some red yarn for pom pom hats.
Goody Bags
Here are some fun monkey-themed ideas for your Sock Monkey Party goody bags.
- Banana-shaped candy in little goody bags labeled "Thanks for Swingin' By!"
- Root Beer Barrel candy (Nothing's more fun than a "barrel" of monkeys!).
- Barrel of Monkeys keychain
- Sock monkeys! Everyone loves a sock monkey, naturally.
- Or buy some pre-made goody bags here
This is the one time the kids can monkey around without getting into (too much) trouble. Have fun!

subset: commoncrawl


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2018 A Sunday Parkways Year in Review
A big Thank You to our participants, volunteers, partners, entertainers, vendors, and Sponsors! Thanks to you, Sunday Parkways continues to introduce Portlanders of all ages to biking, walking and public transit as options for not only commuting but recreation by opening miles of streets for play, exercise, and community building. These routes were designed to create a fun and inclusive environment for people to enjoy neighborhood greenways and low traffic residential streets. Along the way, we also have an opportunity to mingle as a City, to have fun with friends and family, and to come together as a community.
This year we partied like it was 1999! We walked, we rolled, and we biked 37.8 miles. And the cherry on top, we achieved multiple firsts:
- First time at Sunday Parkways on the Green Loop
- First time for many participants, volunteers, vendors and Sponsors to join the fun!
- First time at Gateway Discovery Park
- First time the Bi-lingual Bike Fair has appeared at all of our events
- First time that Kaiser Permanente has offered custom neighborhood inspired decals for the Sticker Hunt
- And we had some great times for the second time around!
- Second round of celebrating our Immigrant and Refugee roots, friends and families with the Walk for Refugees and Immigrants
- Second round on the ONE* Route in East Portland
- ONE = Outer Northeast/ East
- Second round return of having the Columbia Annex back on the route
- Second time we have teamed up with Make Music Day
So you may be wondering, how did we do overall?
- We biked/rolled/walked 37.8 miles together. Bringing the total mileage, we have traveled for Sunday Parkways up to 367.6 miles!
- We volunteered…a LOT! Around 700+ volunteers came out to Sunday Parkways to serve over 100+ shifts working a total of 4500 hours to keep Sunday Parkways rolling.
We owe a BIG ROUND OF APPLAUSE to ALL the volunteers. We appreciate all you do to make these days so magical.
- We have a large entourage. 125,000 people came out to Sunday Parkways this year!!!
Its been one brilliant wonderful ride with all of YOU! Thank you for joining us. You are a reminder that community, family and friends make the world a better place. See you in 2019 for another round of happiness, smiles, health and community.


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Low in the Sky, the Akron-Kent melodic-soundscape group, provides the soundtrack to "Amazing Life," a new THX trailer that demonstrates the capabilities of audio-video systems in top-tier movie theaters. The clip went out to 3,000 state-of-the-art film houses across the country on November 20. The piece was commissioned by California's eyestorm productions, a creative agency and production company that spun off from Lucasfilm after Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith. Eyestorm discovered Low in the Sky via its MySpace page, www.myspace.com/lowinthesky.
"We chose to go a very unconventional route by using a band instead of a composer," says eyestorm co-owner Michael Klima. "We felt that Low in the Sky would be perfect for creating a piece that we wanted to be more musically driven than sound-designed for a picture. I really think it was the right choice in the end."
Low in the Sky's multi-instrumentalist team features producer Corey Farrow as well as Joe Minadeo and Pat McNulty, formerly of Poets of Another Breed, which Scene readers voted best band in 2000 and best hip-hop act in 2001.
Eyestorm commissioned pieces from four composers, but opted for Low in the Sky's music, around which animators created a story of noisemaking aliens that band together for a symphony. The finished version takes the music through a 3-D surround-sound mix.
"My parents have been waiting for me to play on Saturday Night Live with one of my projects," says Minadeo. "That was their idea of a musical success. The THX trailer is way cooler."
The clip is online at StarWars.com, but it's accessible only with a subscription fee. Northeast Ohio's only THX-certified theater is Ridge Park Square Cinema (4788 Ridge Road).
• DJ Mick Boogie's latest must-have is the official LeBron James/Nike mixtape for the LeBron 5 shoe. Play Havoc's new LeBron tribute, "Witness," caps the mix after tracks by Jay-Z, Kanye West, Al Fatz & Paul Wall, and other top names. Listen to "Witness" at www.myspace.com/playhavoc, or visit www.mickboogie.com for a free download.
• California's BaySmoothJazz.com is hosting two Cleveland programs. Tony Steven — the former WJMO/WKDD disc jockey also known as Tony Cleveland — hosts Weekend Sleep-In on Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. And DJ Arlibera hosts Morning Meditations, an inspirational talk and music show, Sundays at 10 a.m. The streaming shows are free.
• Lines Across Lines have finished recording their debut. The emo-rock squad is planning a January or February release, but you can catch the group opening for Spitalfield's final tour on Saturday, December 1, at the Grog Shop (2785 Euclid Heights Boulevard).
• Destructor isn't just a local thrash legend. It's playing Germany's Wacken Open Air Festival, the world's largest metal convention. "We wanted to go back to Europe next year to support our new album," says singer-guitarist Dave Overkill. "And to receive an invite from Wacken is an added bonus. It's a dream come true and the opportunity of a lifetime." The party goes down from July 31 through August 2. Headliners include Iron Maiden, Hatebreed, and an At the Gates reunion.
• Visit blogs.clevescene.com for online exclusives, including a link to "Are You Serious," Low in the Sky's first eyestorm project, which is a short film by choreographer-filmmaker Cari Ann Shim Sham.


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Watch Sedin twins make full use of boards
Published February 25, 2013 03:50 AM
Vancouver Canucks forwards Henrik and Daniel Sedin got off to a superb start on Sunday against the Detroit Red Wings.
The twins had already combined for a goal when Henrik Sedin fed the puck towards Detroit's back boards from center ice. Meanwhile his twin brother, Daniel, charged towards the Detroit zone, scooped up the puck and swiftly beat goaltender Jimmy Howard.
You can watch the play below:
Unfortunately for the Canucks, the Sedin twins' efforts weren't enough of Sunday. Although Vancouver left the first period with a 3-2 lead, Detroit responded with five unanswered goals against netminder Roberto Luongo.


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Eastern/Mountain Gorilla open-mouth "Roar" head model
This is an alternative interchangeable open-mouth head for the Eastern/Mountain Gorilla Anatomy Model, it comes with its own plinth that can also be use to support the close-mouth head. With the open-mouth head and the gorilla basic set you will have a complete set.
Note * This set includes the mouth-opened head, and plinth (the mouth-closed head, body, and large base sold separately). Both subspecies of gorilla models share the exact same body, so all the gorilla heads fits on the same body.
approximate size: 4" x 3 4/5" x 4"(including the base-stand)
original sculpture designed, sculpted, and painted by Jun Huang


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The Department of Library and Information Science at National Taiwan University (DGILIS) offers Bachelor's, Master's and doctoral programs, making it the first department of library and information science in Taiwan to have a complete educational system. DGILIS strives to cultivate information capabilities in students and promotes information literacy.
DGILIS faculty keep up with the trends in the information society and conduct cutting-edge information research that is both interdisciplinary and integrated with technology. DGILIS faculty research is not limited within the field of library and information science; they also conduct collaborative research typically involves scholars in computer engineering, information management, communication technologies, and many other fields. The department has also continued to strengthen cooperative relations with other Departments, like the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, the Department of Information Management, the Department of Business Administration and the Department of Bio-Industry Communication.
DGILIS is distinguished for its research program. The department supports faculty and students for local, national, and international research engagements. Our faculty not only conduct funded research in a wide range of areas. Our faculty also work collaboratively with students on cutting-edge research and publish their results in top-rank journals. With the ultimate goal of making a great impact on individuals, communities, and the society, faculty also partner with scholars in related fields and share their works through publications, presentations, and other scholarly events.http://www.lis.ntu.edu.tw


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Healthcare earnings calendar for the week of October 16th
Sunday, 15-October-2017
All conference call times Eastern. - Special thanks to @TomMathies for helping me compile this list. Very nice of him to take the time to do that.
Monday, October 16
None scheduled
Tuesday, October 17
BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics (BCLI) - 8:30 AM
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) - 8:30 AM
UnitedHealth Group (UNH) - 8:45 AM
Wednesday, October 18
Abbott (ABT) - 9:00 AM
Novan corporate update (NOVN) - 8:30 AM
Thursday, October 19
Danaher (DHR) - 8:00 AM
Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) - 4:30 PM
NeuroMetrix (NURO) - 8:00 AM
Quest Diagnostics (DGX) - 8:30 AM
Roche (RHHBY) - 8:00 AM
Friday, October 20
athenahealth (ATHN) - 8:00 AM
Please let me know if I omitted any names and I'll be happy to add.
Who Am I?
I'm an individual investor from Kansas City. My focus is on biotech stocks, but I enjoy investing in all industries. I'm an old-school, buy and hold investor who believes the best way to outperform and grow capital is to own innovative companies with good management teams over the long-term. more>>>


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Slowly making my way through Ernst Cassier's "An Essay on Man" and ran across this gem which seems particularly useful in our attempts to recover from fake news.
Category: books
A summary of all the books I have read, am reading or would like to read. Sometimes these posts are full reviews, sometimes they are just quick reactions or a key idea. All depends on how much time I have and how big an impact the book had on me. I also use this category for a bit of public not taking so that I can quick search from any internet connected device to remember what book covered a specific idea or had a quote when I am recommending things to friends.
Book notes: The Hidden Wound
I picked up 6-7 books (and a couple pounds of coffee) from my favorite local bookstore in the height of quarantine to help support them while everything was closed. Three of them were for me: Hillbilly Elegy, Appalacian Reckoning (notes on those two coming later) and The Hidden Wound by Wendell Berry. I have (and love) several books of Berry's poetry but the first of his prose I have read. I will admit to identifying with his work in a way that I don't with other authors or poets, simply becaise we are both from Kentucky.
I recall having heard the book mentioned in a podcast or something else I had read…but honestly I am not sure what I thought it was about. When I bought it, I didn't know it was contained his reflections on race, written orginally in 1968 with an extensive afterword added in the eighties.
I haven't looked into other critical reviews of this book, so I don't know where it fits amongst other more recent books on race issues, nor what may be considered a problem in his views. That being said, I did find it a compelling read, with a few spots of trouble. Its rather short, but packs in a lot of ideas. I'll only touch on a few of them here.
Berry starts with an extensive telling of his own personal story and two of the black people that were most important to him growing up, Nick and Aunt Georgie. I got the sense reading this part that he was both trying to establish some credibility, but more so to establish some context for his analysis and reccomendations that come later. One theme that appears over and over is that whites have also been hurt by our racism (hence the title of the book I believe). I don't think Berry is in any way trying to minimize the greater hurt that blacks have and continue to experiences as a resut of racism, but rather to give a reason to white's to change other than "white guilt". Berry builds a really compelling case for diversity, not built on platitudes or virtue signaling, but rather on his own experience of seeing the world through Nick's eyes:
This much is clear to me: insofar as I am capable of feeling such pleasures as I believe Nick felt, I am strong; insofar as I am dependent on pleasures on the pleasures made available by my salary and the things I own, I am weak. I feel much more secure in those pleasures for which I am dependent on the world, as Nick was for most of his, than in those for which I am dependent on the government or on a power company or on the manufacturers of appliances.
This is where I felt a bit of unease, concerned that Berry might be heading into some sort of "magical negro" territory or more generally romanticising the poor. But my read of Berry through the book as a whole is that this is not that. Berry recognizes that he is better off having had shared, deep experiences with Nick. Those experiences have made him better than he would otherwise be by letting him see things from another perspective. I do wonder what Nick might say if asked whether he was better off for his relationship with a young Wendell Berry?
A second theme which stood out to me is Berry's idea that any solution to racism will start with the individual:
I beleive that the experience of all honest men stands, like these books, against the political fantasy that deep human problems can be satifactorily solved by legislation. On the contrary, it is likely that the best and least oppresive laws come as a result or the reflection of honest solutions that men have already made in their own lives. The widespread assumption that men can be set free or dignified or improved by monkeying with some mere aspect of their lives – politics, or economics or technology – promises no solution, but only an unlimited growth of the public apparatus.
This really got my recovering anarcho-libertarian jucies flowing ;-). From what I can tell, the idea of systemic racism has only recently entered the public conciousness, so I don't think Berry had anything to say on that idea. If it he had known about it however, I am guessing from the above that he might see some of the proposed solutions to systemic racism at best as partial remedies. This is not to say that systemtic racism isn't a thing. Rather it is to say that if we want to actually make progress in reducing racism, we have to address both what is in our hearts as well as how we build our institutions.
The afterword outlines four specific problems that Berry sees in actually making progress to resolve racism (with 20 more years of life experience to inform him). He offers no solutions, rather he hopes to highlight how complicated the problems are so that we aren't fooled into thinking there are easy solutions.
Since my last post, I have been trying to do more than just read and think and write. I did march this past Sunday in downtown Cincinnati. I was motivated by a combination of wanting to see for myself what was going on in these marches and of wanting to do something / anything (more than read and think and write). I am happy to have done it. I felt safe the entire time. I didn't agree with everything I heard or read, but I got a better (albeit small) sense of what animated those that I marched with. I also attended a Crittenden city council meeting. That was less of a life experience, but was still worth doing, simply to see the wheels of government working at the most local and personal of levels.
Reading the Hidden Wound has made me realize that I lack any deep shared experiences or ongoing relationships with anyone of color. I don't feel guilty, but rather less than I could be. I feel blind to an entire way of seeing and experiencing the world. My instinct to take action kicks in, but I know I need to be careful here – the chance for a mis step seems extremely high. I am OK with making a mistake, but not with unintentionally hurting someone. Suggestions are sincerely welcome.
Book Notes: Station Eleven
Yes, I read a book about a pandemic during a pandemic. How unoriginal. I heard about Station Eleven on a podcast (forget which one) and it seemed interest and different enough to give it a try. I was looking for some fiction so decided to give it a try. I bought it as an Apple Book (enjoying that platform more and more for my ebook reading) and read it over the course of a few weeks.
Overall it was a good read. Easy to read and the characters were interesting. Mandel uses timeline jumps to great effect, filling the reader in on key background elements from the past immediately before they become relevant to the "main" timeline.
I would say this is a rather hopeful / cheery apocalyptic novel, if there is such a thing. But then again, my baseline comparison is The Road. Not many books more grim than that. Like most good fiction of the genre the story is really about how people relate to each other, in this case using a disease that wipes out 98% of the planet in what seems to be a few weeks, as a backdrop to explore how memory works, why we do/don't get along with others and the importance of community / tribe.
Since finishing it, I discovered a more recent book from the same author, that uses some of the same characters, but is not a sequel or prequel. Rather she characterized it as an alternate timeline. Reminds me of using the same RPG character in different campaigns. Will have to add Glass Hotel to my list for the next time I am looking for some fiction.
What started as some good posting momentum at the start of the year has slowed slightly. Pandemics will do that I suppose. I would like to say that I have been journaling a lot, but that would be a lie. At the start of things I spent far too much screen time on twitter and reddit. Not sure whether I was trying to actually determine whether this was the actual end of the world or simply basking in the doomer glory of it all. Probably a mixture of both. Fortunately I was able to break out of that cycle, a testament to how quickly the thrilling (even the thrilling for the wrong reasons) can become commonplace, and was able to get back to reading.
I am changing my approach to these posts since I was noticing some resistance to completing them. Rather than a "review" which connotes something of value that I add on top, I am framing these as simply notes – a marker of the books I have read and a few of the impressions I am leaving with.
I first heard of the poet David Whyte on a Sam Harris podcast that I listened to on the way in to work. That should place it in time well enough. I really liked the way he described reality as the frontier that exists between the "self" and the "world" and so I ordered his most recent prose book from my favorite local bookshop and picked it up a few weeks later. Another placement for when I started on this.
The three marriages is not about serial divorce nor polygamy, but rather the relationship one has with one's spouse, with one's work and with one's self. Right off the bat Whyte points out that most people's first experience of marriage is the one that they interrupt, specifically first children. The images we carry from our childhood of our parents' marriage stay with us and inform how we see the three marriages throughout our lives.
As a poet, he makes many references to the poetry of others as well as ahis own. In first talking about the marriage to the self, he cites The Prelude by Wordsworth, with whom he shares a particular affinity, calling out the line:
I made no vows, but vows / Were made for meThe Prelude, Wordsworth
to make the point that life comes to find us as much as we go out to find it, but that can only happen if we are awake and aware to the world around us, stopping for even just a minute to pay attention to something besides our selves. He expands on this point is his own work Everything is Waiting for You
To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.Everything is Waiting for You, Whyte
He draws this conclusion about the work we have to do, as well as what is not up to us, in finding a "great work":
To glimpse our vocation, we must learn how to be sought out and found by a work as much as we strive to identify it ourselves. We must make ourself findable by being seen; to do that we must hazard ourselves and make ourselves available to the world we want to enter.The Three Marriages, Whyte
This passage struck me since it speaks directly to something I have more and more trouble with as I get older: trying something new and f*(&ing it up. This is an echo of Whyte's idea from the podcast of reality being a frontier, a conversation, between the self and the world. As I look for great work, as much as I need to learn new skills and new ways of being, I need to put myself in (potentially unfamiliar or uncomfortable) situations even more to let a great work find me.
Whyte touches on the role that worry plays in self discovery, specifically the thing that
we I do to battle with worry: make to do lists:
Millenia of worrying under night skies have brought human beings to the point where the complexities of our contemporary societies have almost reached a breaking point. In many ways, our to-do lists have become the postmodern equivalent of the priest's rosary, the lama's sutra or the old prayer book – keeping a larger, avalanching reality at bay. Above all, the to-do list keeps the evil of not-doing at bay, a list that many of us like to chant and cycle through religiously as we make our way to work through the commute.The Three Marriages, Whyte
I totally saw myself in this. When I used to actually drive into the office, "chanting" my to do list was a regular pastime. One of the hidden blessings of CQ (COVID-19 Quarantine) has been my lack of focus on my to do list. There hasn't been as much to do, and what was on there hasn't seemed as important. I still check it, check things off and add things now and again, but it is not with the same religious ferocity as "before". I have not quite arrived at comfort with the "evil of not-doing", but I can feel myself getting closer. A few more weeks of quarantine and I think I might "arrive" somewhere (which probably means I am fooling myself).
In a chapter on the marriage with work, Whyte takes on the paradox of what seems to be vs. what is about the life of a writer:
From the outside, especially to those that long for a more artistic life, a writer looks to be involved in what looks like an unscheduled imaginative adventure, but what she needs above all else is structure and a goodly amount of space within that structure. It takes a good settled sense of what we are about, first to think that we deserve the time and the to arrange our days so that what we want comes about.The Three Marriages, Whyte
When I am being honest I know that I am still looking for that settled sense of what I am about and that my to do list is the armor that I put up to avoid not-doing long enough to find it. The hardest part seems to be the feeling that after all this time I should already know what I am about. The sense that I knew once and it either wasn't real, has left me, or that simply the frontier between my "self" and the "world" has shifted (I like that explanation most of all).
The Three Marriages is gently disturbing. White uses language to point to things that language can't describe directly. While that is the gift of poetry, the long form of the Three Marriages helped me, who is "poetry-challenged", to see some things I had been missing and realize some things I already knew.
When Things Fall Apart
I have been and still am a "fan" of Buddhism. I think I am allowed to be that and still be an Episcopalian. I think it started listening to Tim Ferris's talk about the benefits of meditation. I'm not ready to fly to Tibet and renounce all of my earthly possessions, but I do think there are some interesting ways of thinking about things that the Buddhist tradition has to offer.
So it was when I started reading Reboot that I was interested in Jerry's connection to what he learned from his teacher and added a few of the books he mentioned to my to-read list. It was only a few days later that I found myself in the place where the universe gives me a sign of what to read next when I saw one of the books on the shelf: When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron.
I am not struggling right with anything specifically right now, but that's not what this book is about. While it can help you with a crisis, although probably not if you read it in the middle of one, the essays in this book more wake you up to the idea that things are falling apart all the time. That's the way of things. Living is dying. It's only our clinging to the way they are or the way we think they should be that causes problems.
We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off-limits to others. We're willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.
There were a few essays that stood out to me. Three for ideas I found helpful and even comforting. And one that I am still struggling with.
The first in the helpful / comforting category is "The Six Kinds of Loneliness". The message in this essay resonated with me since it gets right to the heart of how I feel before I start to subconsciously (although more a more, day by day I can at least notice it) look for a distraction.
Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we invite in….
…When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and rolling loneliness the turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.
The 6 kinds of this cool loneliness are:
- Less desire: the willingness to be be lonely without resolution when everything in us yearns for something to cheer us up
- Contentment: giving up the feeling that there is being able escape from our loneliness will bring any lasting happiness, joy or sense of well being
- Avoiding unnecessary activity: notice when we are keeping ourselves busy simply as a way to avoid the pain of being lonely
- Complete discipline: being ready at any opportunity to come back to the present moment
- Not wandering the world of desire: noticing when we look for food, friends, entertainment and instead relating directly to things as they are
- Not seeking security from one's discursive thoughts: not hiding in the joy of our own inner dialog when things get lonely.
The second helpful essay was about Nonaggression and the Four Maras. This one spoke to me since it gave a label to all the ways I have tried to hide various fears and avoid what is in front of me. The four maras are:
- Devaputura Mara involves seeking pleasure.
- Skandha Mara has to do with how we constantly try to reinvent ourselves.
- Klesha Mara is all about how we use our emotions to stay asleep.
- Yama Mara is fear of death.
I have been visited by all of these Maras at various times and have not responded well. I think that knowing their names will help me see them more easily…and invite them to tea.
The final helpful / comforting essay was the final one in the book called The Path is the Goal. This was a nice wrap up that basically says…where ever you go, there you will be. The path is not preset. There isn't a manual. The path presents itself in each moment and our only job is to be awake in that moment and do the best we can. Everything is a teacher.
The one chapter I struggled with was on Hopelessness and Death. Big surprise, eh? It actually wasn't so much the death part as the hopelessness. Chodron seems to be arguing in favor of taking up the position of hopelessness, as it represents a rejection of how things are and/or a clinging to an idea of how they might be. Perhaps its my "American" showing through, but I struggle with the idea of hopelessness being a superior position to having and hope. How would anything ever get better if people had no hope. No clear idea of a better tomorrow. Don't get me wrong, I know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I also know that things are better by many measures today than they were 200 years ago largely based on hope and skill. Perhaps I am missing the point. Or I still have some more work to do. Both are probably true.
Overall, I enjoyed When Things Fall Apart very much and would recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the pathless path, the groundless ground and the ways we think ourselves into knots.
I am going to attempt to keep better track of the books I have read with quick posts here. These won't be full reviews per se, but rather simply a note (perhaps just to myself) that I finished it and a few of the things I am taking away. The idea is that a year or more into the future when I am trying to remember either the title of a book I read or where I picked up an idea, I can just search my own blog. Rather lazy I know and another outsourcing of memory to the machines, but what can I say.
A colleague at work reccomended the reboot.io podcast to me several months ago. It sounded interestin so I added it to my feed, but didn't get around to listening to an episode until over the Christmas break. Wow. I was interested in the subject mentioned in the title (reclaiming the shadow) but didn't expect to hear what I did. I had to know more.
Turns out the podcast is a promo for a book of the same name, so a few days later I was absolutely devouring this book. The big idea I walked away from is that many (all?) of us bring our unresolved childhood issues to work for the very simple reason that that's where most of us are most of the time so where else do we have to work them out. I am a little learly of the line of thinking that blames everything on childhood, but the way that Jerry tells the story drew me in. It's very personal.
Another amazing take away are the questions that are peppered throughout the book, some in line with the text and some at the end as invitations to journal. Here are some of my favorites:
- What am I not saying that needs to be said? What am I saying (in words or deeds) that is not being heard? What's being said that I am not hearing?
- How would I act were I to remember who I am? What choices would I make, what actions would I take, if I regularly said the things that needed to be said?
- When our employees and colleagues leave our sides and our company, what do I want them to say about our time together?
- The question "Does my life have meaning" is really another set of questions "In what ways have I been brave? and "How have I been kind?"
- How will I know my work is done?
- What would it feel like to not have to know?
- What might my reluctance about looking inward say about the protective patterns of my life? How might such reticense be shaping my organization and our ability to consider alternative possibilities?
If you are looking for something to shake you out of our ledership rut and set you in the direction of doing the hard, but meaningful work of self discovery with through an amazing combination of real stories from the front lines of startups, developmental psychology and budhism, then this is for you.
I don't consider myself a philosopher. I'm more of more a "fan of philosophy" to borrow a phrase from my favorite podcaster. I still have to look up the definition of meta-physics and epistemology. I am not sure of the difference off the top of my head between existentialism and positivism. But that doesn't keep me from following along, perhaps in the same way that a dog enjoys television.
My latest jaunt into the philosophical realm was "The Myth of the State" by Erst Cassier. This was a HBP find that I must admit I bought completely based on the title (give me a break, it was something like $3). What I thought Ersnt would teach me is why the state is an illusion of our collective conscious or unconscious mind. It doesn't really exist. It's just some people telling other people what to do. What the book is actually about turned out to be quite different, but just as interesting.
The Myth of the State was published posthumously, and with a little controversy about how it was finished. It came on the heels of Cassier's blockbuster (if there can be such a thing in the 20th century as a philosophical blockbuster) Essay on Man (which I happened to add to my tsundoku pile a few weeks back). In this book, Cassier gives a rather complete (especially for only 300 pages) and fascinating account of how the state has used myth to propagate itself. If it were written today it might be called something like "Lies the state tells you (for your own good of course)".
For this review, I will give a brief overview of the first 90% of the book to focus on the concluding chapter. I think its extremely relevant to what I sense is going on these days.
The opening section attempts to answer the basic question "what is myth" and comes to the conclusion that myth is the stories we create to explain things when we don't have any better way to understand them. I've come to realize how important story or narrative is over the past few years. Harari argues in Sapiens that its the "one thing" that allowed humans to rule the world (while everything else carries our stuff). At the top level, narrative seems to decompose into rational stories (aka hypothesis) and mythical stories (aka fairy tales). Cassier completes the opening section with an exploration of the impact that myth has on language, psychology and social life.
With that basis set, the center section, which is the bulk of the book, tells of the different twists and turns in the development of state myths from the time of Plato, who propagated the idea of the "legal" state through to Machiavelli's contribution of removing the connection between religion and transcendent order (as an aside, the two chapters on Machiavelli contained some of the most interesting analysis of his work that I have ever read) through to the Romantic's reversal of the Enlightenment view that myth "had been a barbarous thing, a strange and uncouth mass of confused ideas and gross superstitions, a mere monstrosity" to the view that myth was "the mainspring of human culture".
The final section sets up the few philsophers and thinkers that, in Cassier's view had the biggest impact on 20th century political myth (aka those that we can thank for the mess we are in). He begins with a discussion of Carlyle's theory that Hero Worship is "oldest and firmest element in a man's social and political life". From there, it was just a hop skip and a jump to some of the terrible ideas put forward by Gobineau on race worship and the totalitarian race.
From there of course we end up at Hegel. I will set the time aside to read what he had to say for himself one day, but I do get the sense that I understand some of Hegel's ideas better after reading Cassier's synopsis. Cassier posits that the form of Hegel's arguments had for more impact than their content. What's more Cassier is of the opinion that Hegel himself would have strenuously objected to the arguments made by people using the form of his arguments after his death (if he could find a way to project from the Absolute Idea…). That being said, I still can't get my head around Hegel's notions about the state being the ultimate expression of freedom. Perhaps this is an example of what he means that philosophy is only a product of its time, and can't project forward or backward.
Now to the final chapter. I am not exaggerating when I say that the concluding chapter hit me so hard I was contemplating the myth of HPB actually being a portal from another universe that sends me things I am supposed to read. It lays out in 20 or so pages everything that I have experienced in politics as exemplified by the current election cycle. I am going to attempt to communicate the idea Cassier is trying to get across in this chapter (and arguably in the book overall) with as little commentary as possible. Just enough to connect the thoughts without just quoting the whole chapter and making a TLDR post RTLDR.
As you read this think about what you've just witnessed. Regardless of who you plan to vote for tomorrow (I'm out of state and darn it if I didn't forget to absentee ;-), think about the larger context in which this "discernment" process has occurred. Think about how much or little real content there has been. Think about how often emotion was employed instead of reason. Think about who has benefited. Then let me know if you see any parallels between what Cassier was warning about at the start of WWII and what we've all just witnessed from both "sides".
The chapter starts with a discussion about how "unusual and dangerous situations" drive "modern" man to abandon reason and resort to myth.
The call for leadership only appears when a collective desire has reached overwhelming strength and then, on the other hand, all hope of filling this desire in an ordinary and normal way, have failed. At these times the desire is not only keenly felt, but personified. It stands before the eyes of man in a concrete, plastic, individual shape. The intensity of the collective wish is embodied in the leader. The former social bonds – law, justice and constitutions – are declared to be without any value.
He then claims that "modern" man is too sophisticated to buy into the "simple" myths of our "savage" ancestors:
If modern man no longer believes in natural magic, he has by no means given up the belief in a sort of 'social magic'. If a collective wish is felt in its whole strength and intensity, people can be persuaded that it only needs the right man to satisfy it.
Cassier moves on to point to what he views as the most significant development in the 20th century relative to political myth:
…our modern political myths appear indeed as a very strange and paradoxical thing. For what we find in them in the blending of two activities that seem to exclude each other. The modern politician has to combine himself into two entirely different and incompatible functions. [He is the priest of a new, entirely irrational and mysterious religion. But when he has to defend and propagate this religion he proceeds very methodically. Nothing is left to chance' every step is well prepared and premeditated. It is this strange combination that is the most striking feature of our political myths.
Myth has always been described as the result of an unconscious activity and as a free product of imagination. But here we find myth made according to plan.]
Henceforth myths can be manufactured in the same sense and according to the same methods as any other modern weapon – as machine guns or airplanes. This is the new thing – a thing of crucial importance.
Cassier's point seems to be that over time, rationality has replaced myth as the primary narrative structure. This has happened everywhere except in the realm of politics, where myth still reigns supreme, except now we have scientifically created myths. Myths on steroids. GMO myths.
Cassier outlines three changes that happened to allow this myth making machine to come into existence:
- Change the function of language from conveying meaning (i.e. semantics) to conveying emotion. Anyone triggered much these days?
- Create of new "magical" rites that "lull asleep all our active forces, our power of judgement and critical discernment, and take away our feeling of personal responsibility." Remember…you have to vote…or else you won't get your sticker.
- Reinstate "divination" since "Prophecy is an essential element in the new technique of rulership. The most improbable or impossible promises are made." Which do you trust more: campaign promises or liars?
The book ends with this, actually somewhat hopeful, view:
I have no doubt that later generations will look back at many of our political systems with the same feeling as a modern astronomer studies an astrological book or a modern chemist an alchemistic treatise.
And, echoing Francis Bacon's advice that "victory over nature can only be won by obedience", he even starts us down the path of how to get there:
We must learn how to obey the laws of the social world before we can undertake to rule it.
Maybe we all need to become at least a fan of philosophy.
This book doesn't need an intro, so I'll make it short: Self Reliance was one of several essays written by American Transcendentalist movement. Emerson is also sort of a Socrates to Henry David Thoreau's Plato.
You can read it online for free, but the specific version I am reviewing here was put together by the Domino Project. It puts passages from the original text together with excerpts from other authors and famous thinkiers throughout the ages that were trying to make the same point as Emerson. I've read it several times, but this was an interesting way to read it anew.
As the title implies, the focus of the essay is individuality. Each time I read it, a new section speaks to me, and this time around it was this one, on the subject of travel as a means of "finding oneself" (spoiler: Emerson is not a fan):
The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.
I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.
Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.
This was an epic summer of travel for me and my family. I spent all of 4 nights of June in my own bed, and two of those were for less than 6 hours. We went to Russia, Ireland and New Hamsphire. And I had business trips to Italy, Germany, China…and Detroit. Emerson made me think more deeply about the motivation for the voluntary / non-work related trips. Was I looking to learn something more about myself, or more about the world? Upon reflection it was definitely the later, so my trips were Emerson-approved.
Emerson has a good point of course. If you travel hoping to learn about yourself, you are destined to fail. You have to have a good amount of self knowledge before you take that first step out of your door if you are going to be able to process all that you will experience when travelling through anything roughly approaching an objective lens. Since everything you experience at home or abroad is perceived through the subjective lens of your personal experience and the narrtive you contstruct around it, having some idea about how that might color things will help you strip some of that away and see things on your travels as they truly are. Without that, then you are likely to simply reinforce what you already think you know instead of learn something new about the world.
The passage that was paired with this selection is from Pythagorus, and I think the editors did a good job of finding the same idea expressed in a far more company fashion, two thousand years earlier:
No one is free who is not a master of himself.
90 second book review: Red Queen
Red Queen, by Matt Ridley, is another book that made it on my "to read" list somehow that I can't quite remember, and came to be on my "to read" pile by way of Half Price Books. Since I can't remember how I became aware of it, I also can't remember what interested me about it initially or what I hope to get out it when I added it to my list. When I saw it on the HBP books shelf thought I recalled it was "on the list" and upon scanning the back and inside covers it seemed to fit in a genre of books that I typically enjoy: pop science.
Red Queen fits that genre to a tee, although it focuses on a domain of science that I have never felt particularly strong in: biology. I think I have taken a grand total of one biology course, my sophomore year of high school. I don't recall doing particularly poorly…or particularly well. I also don't recall being particularly interested. At least not as interested as I was in what I saw at the time as the "purer" science of physics and it's close relationship with the maths. I somehow avoided biology as a college course altogether, yet here I found myself reading a nearly 400 page biology book. Strange are the path ways that self directed learning will take you sometimes.
The title of the book comes from Lewis Carroll's character of the same name in Through the Looking Glass. In that story the Red Queen (not to be cofused with the Queen of Hearts in the first book) has a dialog where she explains that she has to keep running faster and faster just to keep in the same place since the scenery around her is accelerating as well. In mathematic, rather than literary terms, the story focuses on the idea of a zero sum game. Which is the claim that Ridley makes about evolution.
I have been giving more thought and study to evolutionary theory of late. Some of that is from my interest in one of the story lines in Sapiens: that cultural evolution through language and narrative, became a faster mechanism than biological evolution and that's why we Sapiens rule the planet today. The rest of it comes from the opening of the Arc Museum just a few miles from my house. Suddenly the ability to succinctly state and defend the case for evolutionary theory has become much more relevant.
Ridley argues that rather than some of the traditional conceptualizations of evolution as a progressive, if not always linear process, it is in fact circular. At any given point in time, one branch of the evolutionary tree may be able to get ahead of its competition, but given time for enough random mutations and selection to occur, the leader is overtaken and the cycle begins again. Evolution may seem progressive if you pick specific start and end times, but taken as a whole, it never really gets anyone anywhere. He writes:
"Before 'civilization' and since democracy, men have been unable to accumulate the sort of power than enabled the most successful to be promiscuous despots. The best they could hope for in the Pleistocene period was one or two faithful wives and a few affairs if their hunting or political skills were especially great. The best they can hope for now is a good-looking younger mistress and a devoted wife who is traded in every decade or so. We're back to square one."
(NB: There are a lot of quotes like the above throughout the book. Ridley points out early on that he is not making any moral judgements about the behavior he describes. He is merely trying to describe the behavior as it happens and come up with a narrative that explains why that fits the facts. That's called science.)
He bolsters his argument with theory after theory from a variety of different biologists (all supported with experimental evidence). The book is literally chock full of them, so I will just list a few that I found interesting here:
- The early church was so obsessed with sexual matters for less heavenly and more earthly reasons. Namely, as a way to preventing private wealth accumulation and leaving more church coffers:
"It (the church) had little to say abut polygamy or the begetting of bastards, although both were commonplace and against doctrine. Instead it concentrated on three things: first, divorce, remarriage, and adoption; second, wet nursing, and sex during periods when liturgy demanded abstinence; and third 'incest' between people married to within seven canonical degrees. In all three cases the church seems to have been trying to prevent lords from siring legitimate heirs."
- Three of the things that many evolutionary theorists point to as being uniquely human my have evolved in parallel and were dependent on each other:
"Men keep an eye on their wives by proxy. If the husband is away hunting all day in the forest, he can ask his mother or his neighbor is his wife was up to anything during the day. In the African pygmies that Wrangham studied, gossip was rife and a husband's best chance of deterring his wife's affairs was to let her know that he kept abreast of the gossip. Wrangham when on to observe that this was impossible without language, so he speculated that the sexual division of amor, he institution of child rearing marriages and the invention of language – three of the most fundamental human characteristics shared with no other ape – all depend on one another."
- The development of our oversized brains (as compared to our ape brethren), and the resulting cognitive capabilities that make us unique, may have been an accidental outcome of sexual selection for youth:
"If men began selecting mates that appeared youthful, then any gene that slowed the rate of development of adult characteristics in a woman would make her more attractive at a given age than a rival. Consequently, she would leave more decedents, who would inherit the same gene. Any neoteny (the retention of juvenile features into adult life and which is also credited with allowing further brain development after birth) gene would give the appearance of youthfulness. Neoteny, in other words, could be a a consequence of sexual selection and since neoteny is credited with increasing our intelligence (by enlarging the brain size at adulthood), it is to sexual selection that we should attribute our great intelligence."
- The basic genetic programing that all modern men and women are walking around with:
"There has been no genetic change since we were hunter-gathers, but deep in the mind of the modern man is a simple male hunter-gatherer rule: Strive to acquire power and use it to lure women who will bear heirs; strive to acquire wealth and use it to buy other men's wives who will bear bastards."
"Likewise int he mind of the modern woman is the same basic hunter gatherer calculator, too recently evolved to have changed much: Strive to acquire a provider husband who will invest food and care in your children; strive to find a lover who can give those children first class genes. Only if she is very lucky will they be the same man."
Beides a series of fascinating evolutionary theories, I came away impressed with the imaginations of the various biologists that came up with these theories. I have become aware of an entirely different approach to narrative construction that is more complex than the straightforward physics of force A applied to point 1 results in force B at point 2. Evolutionary narrative construction involves enough varied groups and and interests that a Game of Thrones writer would be well served by picking up a copy of this book for plot ideas.
Ridley knows that many of his ideas will be used by some to make political arguments on one side or another since he writes in the Epilogue:
"No doubt its (red queen evolutionary narratives) politicization and the vested interests ranged against it will do as much damage as was done to previous attempts to understand human nature."
He shares his story anyway since having these stories is how we break out of the seeming pre-destiny of genetics. Our genetic "programming" may seem to some like an inescapable prison. I view it differently (thanks to Sapiens): the power of language and story has given us both the tools to become aware of our base level "programming". With this awareness we can then write a new higher level "program" that over rides what our genetics tells us to do. Culture eats genetics for breakfast every day. We just have to decide what we're cooking.
90 second book review: Tribe
Tribe, by Sebastian Junger, explores the ties that bind small groups together though the lens of men that go to fight and die for their country. Tribe was an impulse buy for me. I listened to an interview that Junger did on the Tim Ferriss podcast while mowing, pulled my iPhone from my pocket, did a search, "Buy Now" and two days later (Thanks Prime!) I was cracking it open. Sorry to all the other books on my "to read" pile…sometimes something just catches my fancy.
I was hoping to get some insight into why tribes form and why they are important to human well being. The subject of tribe has interested me since I first learned about the Dunbar number. Part exploration, part lamentation, Tribe is not a deeply scientific work. There are no anthropologically verified per bonding models discussed. There really isn't any evidence to speak of. There is however, plenty of anecdotal narrative, direct experience and some deep reflection on that experience.
Junger is probably most well known as the author of The Perfect Storm, which was made into a movie. I first heard about him when I watched Restrepo, a documentary he directed that follows a group of soldiers through a deployment in Afghanistan. Regardless of your views on the war in Afghanistan, you should watch and reflect on Restrepo (available on Netflix last I checked).
In Tribe, Junger is attempting to explain why those that we send to war to kill and die in our name are suffering the effects of PTSD in increasing numbers. He starts with an exploration of the "going native" phenomenon of the early colonial days. In the decades before the founding of the US, and for some time afterwards, there were numerous stories of white colonials leaving their cities, towns or villages and joining the local native american tribes. There were even stories of people being taken by the tribes against their will, and after being "rescued", returning to the tribes that had kidnapped them, drawn by something more than an early version of Stockholm syndrome. What Junger points out about all of these stories, is that there are almost no examples of a native american leaving his/her tribe to live in a colonial city, town or village.
The conclusion that Junger draws from this is that there was something fundamentally better about the native way of life that even colonists that had never experienced it before immediately recognized when they saw it. He argues that the natives live in a way that we are more adapted to from an evolutionary standpoint and that:
"First agriculture, and then industry, changed two fundamental things about human experience. The accumulation of personal property allowed people to make more and more individualistic choices about their lives and those choices unavoidably diminished group efforts toward a common good. And as society modernized, people found themselves able to live independently from any communal group. A person living in a modern city or suburb can, for the first time in history, go through an entire day – or an entire life – mostly encountering complete strangers. They can be surrounded by others and yet feel deeply, dangerously alone."
The rest of the book takes place in more recent history, from the big wars of the previous century through the present conflicts in the middle east. Junger credits his very existence to war, tracing the series of events that lead his ancestors to move from here to there, driven on by wars or rumors of war. He talks about his own refusal to sign his draft card when it arrived shortly after the end of the Viet Nam war and the conversation he had with his anti-war father that changed his mind.
Junger never served, but through a series of twists and turns eventually became a press correspondent assigned to various conflict zones. So while he was never a "tigger puller" he has been in the line of fire (with nothing more than a camera and a microphone). At one point in Tribe, Junger relates his own experience with PTSD, which first surfaces in the New York Subway.
"Suddenly I found myself backed up against an iron support column, convinced that I was going to die. For some reason everything seemed like a threat: there were too many people on the platform, the trains were moving too fast, the lights were too bright, the world was too loud. I couldn't really explain what was wrong, but I was more scared than I ever was in Afghanistan."
Junger relates this experience as a launching point to talk about the increasing occurrence of long term PTSD in todays vets. He points out a few factors which are contributing to it's rise.
First, in very traditional (read: tribal) societies, war was always very close to home. In most modern conflicts at least one of the armies (and almost always ours) is fighting far from home. As a result, the war fighters are the only once that experience the war first hand. This asymmetry of experience between war fighters and those they leave at home leads to a feeling of separateness that pushes against the bonds of tribe that may have motivated them to go to war in the first place.
Next, he talks about studies which show those that are the most aggressive are actually the least affected by long term PTSD. He concludes from this that overall we have become less aggressive. I'm not sure whether he views this as an overall good or bad thing, but he does make pains to point out that it has left our soldiers less capable of dealing with the long term impacts of fighting.
Lastly, he focuses on the near instantaneous transfer from battle front to home front that modern soldiers experience due to the wide availability and use of air transport. He relates stories of soldiers riding boats home after WWII, and the time that gave them to decompress and process what they had seen in the company of others who had seen the same before they were confronted with re-assimilating to the the home they had left to go and fight. Modern soldiers can be on the front lines one day and mowing their lawn the next.
He concludes the book with some recommendations including using public holidays that used to mean something (anyone happen to know what we are memorializing on memorial day) as a chance for veterans to speak to their local community about their experience. I do think that might do a lot to heal the unseen wounds many of these veterans as well as make those that decide to send them to war (or not oppose those that do) more awake to the realities of exactly what they are asking someone else to do in their name.
On the larger point about tribe, war and what we've lost in the modern world, I can understand where Junger is trying to go, but I think he misses an important connection and sequence. While his assessment of the modern catalysts for the increased rates of PTSD is right on, he stops short of naming the root cause: war itself. He can't quite bring himself to reach the obvious conclusion that without war there would be no PTSD. In fact he still sees war as having some redeeming qualities:
"If war were purely and absolutely bad in every single aspect and toxic in all its effects, it would probably not happen as often as it does. But in addition to all the destruction and loss of life, war also inspires ancient human virtues of courage, loyalty and selflessness that can be utterly intoxicating to the people that experience them."
I have no reason to doubt that this is true. But I have to ask is this the only or even the best way to inspire these ancient human virtues? Does the means justify the ends? Can war be considered just, or perhaps even valuable, since it makes those that fight in it courageous, loyal and selfless? Is it worth it, even to the individual, to experience those virtues if in exchange they are faced with being more scared of a crowded space for the res too their life at home than they were on the battlefield? While Junger concludes correctly that a greater sense of tribe can heal those suffering from PTSD, I have to wonder if a greater sense of tribe could prevent the wars that create the need for healing in the first place?


text:
From the moment I hopped off the plane at Dublin Airport (with a dream and my raincoat), I knew I loved Ireland. No, it wasn't only because I was unhealthily obsessed with Niall Horan in eighth grade, because I had just watched season one of "Derry Girls" or because Saoirse Ronan is one of my favorite actresses. But yes, it was 100 percent because every time I heard "Galway Girl" by Ed Sheeran I felt like jumping up on a table with a Guinness and attempting my best jig. This trip to Ireland had been planned for St. Patrick's Day weekend, which as an American, is a pretty big deal. Sure, it's fun to party with green colored shots while wearing an entirely green outfit in some frat's backyard in Berkeley, but doing the same thing in Ireland is next level.
Instead of opting for Dublin, my group decided to go to Galway, where the Airbnb's were cheap and the town was quaint. It's an old Irish legend that every time an American goes to to Dublin for St. Patty's, a leprechaun dies. But every time an American decides to go to Galway, it rains pots of gold over the Emerald Isle. I exaggerate, but according to the Irish, Galway is far superior to Dublin on St. Patrick's, and they were totally correct.
When we arrived in Galway, we were blown away by the lushness of the greenery and the beauty of the chill ocean nearby. Situated on the west side of Ireland, Galway sits pretty with its quaint atmosphere, homey old pubs and cobblestone paths. It's not too big, but it certainly didn't feel too small. The first day was rainy, but that only accentuated the charm of the stone buildings. We checked out The Quay Street Kitchen, a fantastic restaurant with some amazing mussels and incredible calamari. Since it's so close to the ocean, Galway's best meals always included seafood. As we walked around that night, we enjoyed the various street performers, including one man singing every karaoke song you would ever request, an Irish step dancer and a man shredding on a very small guitar.
If you go to Galway, you need to try a Guinness and a Jameson with ginger ale. It's pretty much mandatory. The best places to do that were Monroe's Tavern and The Crane Bar. Both had some amazing live music and cozy atmospheres that instantly made you feel like an old Irish man wearing a tweed flat cap and smoking a pipe. There's no better way to escape the wet cold outside than chatting with some friends. It was great craic! (Is that how you use the term? Still unsure.)
The next day, we headed to the Cliffs of Moher on a two and a half hour bus ride, filled with — you guessed it, other American tourists. When we arrived at the Cliffs of Moher, the wind and rain felt like they were going to blow us into oblivion. This certainly wasn't a good omen for a group of people trying to get close to a perilous edge of a cliff, but after about an hour seeing waterfalls fall and getting thrown off our feet, the storm cleared.
It's hard to describe the magic one feels at the cliffs. They're fantastic, terrifying and almost unreal. After hearing rumors about how many people die each year from landslides or falling off, we tried to be cautious. But (don't tell my mom), we did at one point go on the other side of the barrier to get a closer look and better pictures. Don't worry, there's a lot of space between the rather weak barrier and the edge, so most people go on the other side. Once the sun came out, the sky and the ocean were a brilliant blue, and the famous green of the grass shone. While climbing up a rather muddy and steep hill, a rainbow appeared, almost as if St. Patrick himself was blessing our trip. Unfortunately, the end of the rainbow was at the bottom of the cliff, so there was no way we could get to the pot o'gold, but it was a magical moment nonetheless.
When we returned to Galway, muddy, tired and still in shock at the beauty and wonder we saw, we did what college students do best, which was eat some greasy food. McDonagh's had some of the best fish and chips I've eaten in my life, and were much needed after a long day with an empty stomach but a full heart. We ended the night at a pub, as one does in Ireland, and called it a fantastic day.
St. Patrick's the next day entailed a local parade with school kids and different community groups marching down the street, and then going to the pubs. Unfortunately, we had to catch a bus back to Dublin Airport that same day, but it was a St. Patrick's Day weekend I'll never forget.
If you ever have the chance to go to Ireland, don't miss Galway. Everyone I met before told me they loved it, and now I know why. It welcomes you with open arms, a drink and a "sláinte!" for good measure.


text: Star Force (NES) Game Hub Star Force Game Hub Fact FilePlatform: NESRelease: November 1987Genre: ActionDeveloper: TecmoPublisher: TecmoPlayers: 1Articles June 4, 1987CES: Third Party Licensee Games Fall PreviewCheck out all of the announced games!Read More June 6, 1987Ed Semrad Talks Summer CES 1987Find out what he saw at the show and what's coming soon to your NES.Read More December 14, 1987December 1987 Computer EntertainerContra, Jackal, and Rampage announced for the NES. Plus, reviews of Winter Games, Tiger-Heli, Star Force, Kid Niki, and The Goonies II.Read More July 23, 1988Premiere Issue Of Nintendo Power Now ShippingSuper Mario Bros. 2 gets 20 pages of coverage! Plus Zelda and Contra maps, tons of tips and tricks, and secret codes for your favorite NES games.Read More November 20, 2017Warp Zone Podcast: November 1987The Goonies II, BreakThru, Top Gun, Super Pitfall, J.C. Penney XMAS Catalog & Trip Down Memory Lane & more!Read More Media Instruction Booklet Star Force


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It's safe to say that we had some pretty miserable weather this April, with wintry temperatures, bitter winds, and plenty of rain!
With this in mind, it is important to keep an eye on your homes for any kind of outdoor damages that may contribute to penetrating damp. These damages may include:
- Leaking gutters/downpipes
- Porous brickwork
- Defective pointing
- Inadequate window cill drip grooves
- Defective joints around doors and windows
When it rains, the moisture soaks into the walls of your property but usually it doesn't reach the inner surface due to either natural evaporation or the cavity in the wall. However, in periods of prolonged rainfall , the evaporation of moisture decreases, meaning the water begins to penetrate further into the inner surface causing penetrating damp.
It doesn't matter whether your property is old or new, penetrating damp can affect all kinds of buildings and lead to further damp problems in your home such as wet rot, damp plaster, heat loss, and mould growth on the inside and moss and algae on the outside of your home.
If you have noticed any damages on your building and are worried about penetrating damp, contact us and we will send out one of our trained specialists to identify any problems, recommend corrective treatments (if any), and advise on any additional steps.
If you would like to find out more about penetrating damp, visit our Penetrating Damp page.


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Drawings of Humans and Dolphins - Swimming with elegance!
The dolphin is a charming animal full of lovely expressions. It is especially wise and excels at communication, making this mammal a beloved fan favorite in every aquarium. We're sure we've all dreamt of swimming with dolphins in the sea.
This time we are featuring illustrations of an inseparable pair; humans and dolphins.


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https://www.rivieranayarit.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/logox300.jpg 0 0 1stonthelist https://www.rivieranayarit.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/logox300.jpg 1stonthelist2019-01-11 15:34:002019-01-11 15:34:00The 3rd Nuevo Vallarta Car Show presents 300 collection cars in the Riviera Nayarit
The 3rd Nuevo Vallarta Car Show presents 300 collection cars in the Riviera Nayarit
- Classic and modified car fanatics will meet on January 12-13 in the parking lot of the FIBBA in Nuevo Vallarta for this event with a cause in pro of the Bahía de Banderas Red Cross.
Over 300 collection cars, motorcycles, and spectacular modified autos will be on display for the 3rdNuevo Vallarta Car Show 2019 to be held January 12-13 in the Riviera Nayarit.
Organized by the Wolfs Bugs Nuevo Vallarta club, this event was created to promote relationships among auto aficionados, as well as providing Bahía de Banderas locals and visitors to the Riviera Nayarit with an alternative entertainment activity. It's an event with a noble cause, as every year it chooses a local charity in need to help out. This year, entry fees will be given to the Bahía de Banderas Red Cross.
A parade and a contest-exhibition are part of the event that will include the participation of different types of vehicles divided among the following categories: Classic, Euro, Tuning (Modified), Custom (Personalized); and Motorcycles. Registered clubs include Leon, San Luis Potosí, Durango, Mazatlán, Lagos de Moreno and Tepic, as well as local clubs from Bahía de Banderas and Puerto Vallarta.
Activities will start on Saturday, January 12th at 5:30 p.m. with a parade of cars down the main streets of the Fraccionamiento Náutico Turístico Nuevo Vallarta, where a small exhibition will be held. The exhibition will be followed by a mixer for the participants, their families, and the general public.
At 8 a.m. on Sunday the 13th, the vehicles will be allowed into the parking lot at the FIBBA Beach Club.
Among the novelties this year is the unveiling of four classic cars: a Woolworth, an Apache, a Cheyenne pickup, and a Chevrolet Camino. Contests, accessories sales, a kids' area, and live music will all be part of the fun.
The donation for this event with a cause is $20 pesos.
For more information and registration: https://www.facebook.com/Nuevovallartacarshow/
Write to firstname.lastname@example.com or call Tel. 322 151 6396.
The Nuevo Vallarta Car Show is an event sponsored by the Riviera Nayarit Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) and the Bahía de Banderas Hotel and Motel Assoiation (AHMBB), with the support of the Government of the State of Nayarit via the Tourism Promotion Trust (Fiprotur).


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Induced Conveying Machines
Induced Conveying
The patented Kinergy Drive System has proven to be the most versatile and energy-efficient vibratory drive known. This Drive System is the primary advantage that sets Kinergy apart from the rest.
Induced Conveying machines rely solely on the vibratory action to make materials move uphill, downhill, or horizontally. The pitch and catch action allows highly abrasive materials to be conveyed on a Kinergy Vibrating Machine with very little wear on the conveying trough surfaces. Degradation or attrition of the material being conveyed is virtually eliminated.
These machines are powered by Kinergy's electrically controlled, modern version of using sub-resonant tuned springs combined with rotating weights on an A.C. motor. When the applied load increases, the springs inherently drive harder. It maximizes the use of "kinergy" which is defined as the kinetic energy developed by a spring's motion during the drive portion of its cycle. This is why the Kinergy Drive System is unrivaled.
Larger units are possible due to the spreading distribution of the dynamic forces across the width and along the length of the unit. The use of drive springs saves energy. Counterbalancing is available, thus reducing any transmitted forces to the support structure by at least 90%.
The electrical control of the Kinergy Drive System provides a full-range of adjustment from virtually zero to the maximum TPH output. Plus it can momentarily pulse the vibration to a more vigorous action to improve performance.
The optimum stroke angle, smooth and quiet operation, the ability to automatically and repetitively pulse the vibratory action, plus the highest degree of energy efficiency are inherent with all of Kinergy's Induced Conveying Machines to ensure the best performance available. And with no more than three component parts, the design of the Kinergy Drive System is about as simple as it can be. Now adapted to Induced Conveying machines, this Drive System has proven to be the most versatile and energy-efficient vibratory drive known.
Kinergy's Induced Conveying Product Line includes:
- Vibrating Feeders
- Vibrating Conveyors
- Vibrating Screens
- Vibrating Spiral Elevators
- Vibrating Shakeouts
- Vibrating Fluidized Bed Coolers
- Vibrating Fluidized Bed Dryers
- Vibrating Boiler Grates
To learn more about Induced Conveying machines using this unique Drive System, please call 502.366.5685 or download Kinergy's descriptive Bulletin KDB-1 entitled "Moving and Processing Bulk Solids by the Kinergy Drive System".
Free Booklet: "Introducing Vibratory Machines for Material Handling"
Realizing vibrations can be very destructive, Engineers seldom considered intentionally creating vibrations in a machine to perform a beneficial function. Even so, over the years and by taking advantage of the principle of "Natural Frequency", these purposely vibrated machines have been gradually but steadily improved. Thus, these Electro-Mechanical Machines now have more Electrical Operating Versatility and are ranked among the most "Energy Efficient" available. This history and the progressive evolution are explained in the Booklet entitled "Introducing Vibratory Machines for Material Handling". The booklet is intended to be educational and is available upon request.


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15% OFF | Shake Organic Skin Spritz for Cats & Dogs
100% Organic Skin Spritz for Dogs & Cats. Hot Spot & Itch Relief. Organic Skin Spritz provides Hot Spot & Itch Relief for raw, irritated skin. Made with gentle and soothing organic plant extracts. Lick Deterrent and Antibacterial.
- For Raw, Irritated Skin.
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- Soothes cuts, scrapes & bug bites.
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Herbal, eucalyptus & mint, with bold earth notes – 100% organic.
Organic Aloe, Organic Witch Hazel, Dead Sea Salt, Organic Apple Cider Vinegar, Organic Eucalyptus, Organic Peppermint, Organic Plant-Derived Glycerin, Organic Chamomile, Organic Rose, Organic Dandelion & Organic Slippery Elm.
Suitable For:
Dogs and Cats
Direction For Use:
Shake well before use. Spray directly onto coat and skin. Avoid eyes and mouth. Spritz lightly and often – do not soak fur or skin.
Safe for kittens & puppies.
*Lick deterrent – 100% organic ingredients with naturally bitter taste. Safe to lick in small amounts. If your pet continuously licks an area, discontinue use of spritz and consult your vet.
Product Weight:
4.5oz (133ml)


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I was told the following story this week by one of my clients. He works for a large organization with many software development groups. The company believes retrospectives are a good thing and some people in the company, including my client, are trained in facilitation.
A few weeks before Christmas my client got a call from another group lead in the company who asked if he could facilitate a retrospective. "Sure" said my client who went to discuss it with the group lead.
Now it turns out that this group has not been holding regular (iteration) retrospectives during the project so this was to be the end of project retrospective. But the project had slipped a couple of months so wouldn't ship until February. "Arh" says my client, "wouldn't it make sense to hold this retrospective then?"
"Yes" says the group lead, "but, one of my objectives for the year is to hold a project retrospective so we need to do it this side of Christmas". This company operates management by objective and the group lead had this objectives and his manager didn't want to vary the objectives so an "almost done" retrospective it would be.
There are two schools of thought on when to hold a retrospective and this case was neither of them. The first school, exemplified by Norm Kerth in Retrospectives is the Big End of Project Retrospective (BEPR). The problem with this type of retrospective is that it occurs too late to make a difference to a project. Only if the same people will be working on something similar sometime soon is there a lot of benefit to the participants.
Still the BEPR is a good way of getting started with retrospectives. If you've never held one before there is a lot of ground to cover. I find them useful when I'm getting started with a team as a first step towards regular retrospectives and to help loosen the team up. It doesn't necessarily have to be at the end of a project but to have value it needs to be held in time to make a difference. Do it in "stoppage time" probably makes little difference.
The second school of thought is exemplified in Diana Larsen and Esther Derby's book Agile Retrospectives is the Regular Iteration Retrospective (RIR). I recently came across Joshua Kerievsky's "How To Run An Iteration Retrospective" which is a good one page guide to this type of retrospective.
These are smaller, shorter, retrospectives that occur on a regular basis. Typically these are held at the end of an iteration so anything between 1 week and 4 weeks. By occurring regularly such retrospectives can make a difference while work is in progress. There are two problems here, the first is confusion and the second freshness, let me explain.
Simply, people get confused about what is a retrospective at the end of an iteration and what is not. This isn't helped when you occasionally skip a retrospective.
I've been known to skip retrospectives, typically when the team is still settling and I can see changes occurring organically. In these cases I prefer to leave things to improve by themselves.
I've also skipped them when I feel that they will sap morale. I recently worked with a large client where I was coaching several teams. It quickly become apparent that the problems the teams were facing were systematic and beyond the teams ability to fix. What was needed was structural change across the organization. This wasn't going to happen any time soon but until it did asking the teams to reflect on the problems they faced would only revisit the same old ground.
At the end of an iteration there are three types end of reflection to my mind:
• Review: this happens at the end of every iteration. Look at the work done, count the points (if using), talk about what was done and problems encountered. This needs to happen to close the iteration. Not really a retrospective but sometimes its seen as one.
• Informal retrospective: as part of the review or immediately afterwards. A discussion of what has happened, what could be useful and how the team might change. Informal retrospectives are useful when there is not the time for a formal one (they flow naturally after a review), when the team are still settling in or when the team are recovering from a lot of micro-management and learned dependency.
• Formal retrospectives: a formal period of time for reflection with some exercises to facilitate thinking. This format also allows you to keep track of what action was decided on and follow up changes. Ultimately all teams should be aiming for this type of retrospective.
The second problem with RIR's is freshness and mainly the formal retrospectives. If you are holding these every second week and doing the same exercises they quickly become boring. The trick is to vary the exercises and try new things. Again this is one reason why I'm happy to use informal retrospectives, more variety.
I've recently had success using dialogue sheets as a facilitation tool in formal retrospectives. I'll post my template online soon and blog about it in more detail.
One of the big difference between BEPR and RIR is the timeline. In a BEPR the creation of a timeline is normally a (even the) major event. The team map out what took place and when it happened, and then reflect on it. If you are holding RIR then creating a timeline for, say, 2 weeks then it doesn't get you very far. Hence the need for more activities to trigger reflection.
As you might have gathered from above, RIR are in many places displacing BEPR as teams move to more Agile development. Generally this is a good thing but I suspect the BEPR is due a comeback and I think the force for this will be the Kanban development process.
Two factors make RIR less suitable to Kanban. Firstly the most advanced Kanban teams don't bother with iterations. The pull system renders them less necessary, therefore the natural place to hold an RIR disappears.
Second, drawing from Lean, Kanban teams may well adopt a "Stop the line" mentality. That is, if the team see a problem the immediately address it rather than waiting for the retrospective to come along.
Yet I still think there is are occasions when it is worth the team stopping and actively taking time to reflect. In Lean we might think of this as a Kaizen or Kaikaku event. At such time a BEPR retrospective might be exactly right. Still, schedule them every quarter. Make them frequent enough to make a difference and avoid the problems my client had.