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Terry Mollner — whose Calvert Impact Capital funds are the world's largest, at $9 billion (or $12 billion, depending on what source you cite) — is one of the great pioneers of a new economy based on meaningful relationshipsand the common good — a conceptual framework that is increasingly called 'Game B' these days, as an alternative to the prevailing global model of 'Game A', zero-sum, win-lose capitalism. Mollner's two guiding lights are decidedly at odds with the principles that drive business today. In fact, not only are they conspiciously absent in models of corporate governance, to many, they constitute sheer economic heresy. To Game A'ers, internal, non-client relationships and the common good are deep distractions from what really matters — profit — and all of its tributaries—the things we take the time to actually measure—like market share, backlog, growth, productivity, efficiency, and of course, #winning. In corporations, words like 'wellness' are proudly marketed to potential employees. But when you consider that large (20,000+) employers spend less than $800 per employee on wellness incentives and programs, according to healthpayerintelligence.com, and that the wellness industry is a $6 Billion affair in the United States—where more is spent per capita than elsewhere, making wellness spending equal to just three hundredths of one percent of the $21.5 Trillion US economy, according to investopedia.com—wellness is still largely — sadly — little more than a salve, applied in order to keep workers happy enough that they will generate increasing profits for the owners, and healthy enough that employers see some financial return on their investment. In fact, according to health tech company helloheart.com, wellness spending is applied to one of two categories, and that companies see a $0.50 ROI on every dollar spent on 'lifestyle management', and a $3.80 ROI—a fourfold return—on 'disease management'. So wellness spending is both minimal and good for the bottom line; and when put together, these two statistics betray just how little employees' mental and physical health figures into corporate America's balance sheet, and focus. With regard to the common good, it's better, but there is significant room to grow. The Harvard Business Reviewwrites that Fortune 500 companies spend a total of $20 Billion on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, of their $13.7 Trillion in combined revenues (they collectively comprise 2/3 of the US GDP). That means that the common good receives one-and-a-half hundredths of one percent of Fortune 500 revenues.
I'm not clapping.
So back in 1973, Mollner set out to create an alternative — an antidote, really — to a business model he was convinced would eventually drive the planet and its people to ruin, if left unchecked. His goal was to prove that such a thing could exist and be "fully integrated into the modern world," as it is, today. As he writes in the astounding article, Mondragon: The Loving Society That is Our Inevitable Future, "I had been searching the globe for years for a Relationship Age society," and adds, "I had never expected to find such a mature and comprehensive example," hiding in plain sight.
He did. And what he found has been operating that way since its inception at the height of World War II, some 75-plus years ago, birthed in war-torn Western Europe, under the nose of Spain's great dictator, Francisco Franco. That was long before it became the dominant association of cooperative businesses in Spain. Today, Mondragón — named after the town in which it was founded, and centered — is comprised of over 30,000 members. Collectively, they are Spain's top producer of industrial machinery and major home appliances, lead the way in heavy construction, furniture production, farming and high technology, and created Spain's computer chip industry. Their profitability is twice that of the average Spanish corporation, and worker productivity is higher than anywhere else in the country. Even more amazingly, it operates its own banks, schools, health insurance companies and food stores, in an ecosystem of community services and relationships. And tellingly, their Entrepreneurial Division, which provides venture capital to new 'relationship cooperatives', boasts close to a 100% success rate. When we set that against the American average of 80% failure within five years, it's nothing less than astounding.
Put in a single sentence, their mantra is: relationships for life. They approach all business activities through this lens, not just because the owner-members are tied to their investments — people and capital — for life, but because of the inherently tribal feeling they all share that they are family. They feel this way, because frankly, they are treated this way, from their education to their health to their training to their work-life balance to the literal investment and ownership stake they all have in their own work concern.
In short, consistent with the title of Mollner's article, love drives business in Mondragón.
What a strange concept: a business built on love. But that's exactly what it is. Mondragón, the business enterprise, is a modern community that was founded on infinite values, like love, family, connection, honesty, relationships, trust, respect, safety, communication and tolerance, by a young priest named Don Jose Maria Arizmendiarrietta. For Don Jose Maria, people came before things.
When it came to making decisions, he was known mostly for the following question, "How can we do this in a way which works fully for those in the enterprise and those in the community rather than for one more than the other?" To him, the notion that there needed to be a loser in any transaction was a shortcoming of imagination.
Just a few concrete examples of how it works:
- Every member of the cooperative is also an owner. If they don't have enough capital for their initial investment (equivalent to $15,000 USD), it's loaned to them, and they pay it down, with their work contributions.
- Loans to finance new ventures that members incubate are made by the conglomerate's own financing arm, until the investment succeeds. With every challenge faced and not met, the interest rates lower, not raise. If the fledgling business is in deep enough trouble, the bank will donate capital to the business. Eventually, most businesses succeed, because they have been supported deeply, until they do. Said another way, a parent doesn't abandon its child until it can stand on its own two feet.
- Half of all profits made within the cooperatives go directly to the owner-member-employees; however, beyond a guaranteed 6% interest dividend, the remaining profits are reinvested in their individual "internal capital accounts", there to grow with the continued success of the companies.
- Beyond this, ten percent of all cooperative profits are earmarked for charity (against a 2% average in the United States).
- Unemployment insurance pays 80% of take-home pay in the case of a layoff, and a pension plan pays 60% of the same, until death — on top of their cooperative profits.
- The Board of Trustees is fully comprised of cooperative members.
It goes on.
The larger arc of this story is that a new model of business is emerging — one that stands at odds with what Mollner refers to as the Material Agestructural priority order of "capital, then product, then managers, then workers". In a Relationship Age company, it's the opposite: workers, then managers, then product, then capital. Which is another way of saying:
"People before things."
No shortage of Game B efforts are underway today — a 'skunkworks', of sorts, within the prevailing model of business. I belong to one such community — on Facebook — where ideas and initiatives are shared freely, because the driving goal of this new work effort is for people to test new ideas that can improve or save lives, and let them proliferate as quickly as possible, without regard to whose hands craft a winning alternative. In other words, in Game B efforts, any idea that improves the outcome for people is a winning idea, whatever the commercial gain may eventually be, if at all.
I have no way of describing it other than to call this 'altruistic behavior', whose end goal is primarily the health of the collective — you know, people. It is a form of karmic confidence, advanced before it has been earned.
Game A
People are doing this because they understand that nearly every institution we have created over thet past 13,000 years has followed a Game A model of win-lose relationships and activities that place things (profit, really) before people (financial, physiological and emotional wellness), and in which people are primarily seen as tools for achieving economic (or military, or political) success.
We see this excessive attachment to money in every broken system today, from politics, which are largely run by lobbyists and corporate kickbacks, to agriculture, which continually squeezes—destroys, really—the Earth for profit, to healthcare, where access to services and drugs correlates with a sliding scale of financial means, to media, where the sole determinant of what gets airtime is competitive market share, to social interaction, which is increasingly transactional (everyone's a brand, or a network connection), to education, which fewer and fewer can afford every year, and where here, too, money is the key that opens doors to both quality, and future networks. And of course, there's the pandemic response itself, whose death toll is largely a reflection of the brokenness of these systems — systems that were highlighted by Ed Yong just two days ago, in his searing article for The Atlantic, How the Pandemic Defeated America. Yong is one of a few staff writers who have covered COVID-19 since it first descended upon us, speaking to more than 100 experts in a variety of fields. He lists countless economic drivers that have led to a rampant and unmatched death toll, in the United States: its "chronic underfunding of public health"; the "decades-long process of shredding the nation's social safety net"; the "millions of essential workers in low-paying jobs" who "risk their life for their livelihood"; the "fealty to a dangerous strain of individualism"; the uprooting of "the planet's animals, forcing them into new and narrower ranges that are on our own doorsteps," from which relentless onslaught "viruses have come bursting out"; the defunding of China-based US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specialists, and the American epidemiologist embedded within China's own CDC; the profit-led "era of sick buildings" in which "pollutants and pathogens built up indoors", leading to the sacrifice of "designing buildings for people"; the chronic understaffing of nursing homes — three in four!; the 'economic protectionist' policy of "reducing the influx of immigrants who make up a quarter of long-term caregivers"; the "national temperament that views health as a matter of personal responsibility rather than a collective good"; the "chronically strapped local health departments" who "lost 55,000 jobs — a quarter of their workforce" that resulted from "budget cuts", which itself resulted from the fact that "the US spends just 2.5 percent of its gigantic health-care budget on public health".
Cue: For the Love of Money—the theme song Donald J. Trump chose for his TV show, The Apprentice:
For the love of money
People will lie, Lord, they will cheat
For the love of money
People don't care who they hurt or beat
For that lean, mean, mean green
Almighty dollar…
Money money money mo-o-o-oney, money!
Yong writes, "This profit-driven system has scant incentive to invest in spare beds, stockpiled supplies, peacetime drills, and layered contingency plans." He adds, "America's hospitals have been pruned and stretched by market forces to run close to full capacity, with little ability to adapt in a crisis."
The problems go beyond healthcare. One could argue that in a world driven by profit, the first thing to suffer is the people. Whether they lose their job, or are denied a living wage, or are forced to cram into ever-shrinking airline seats, or to move to cities in search of a better job to help 'those back home', or are forced to sue one another over what should be inalienable rights, denied, or are drinking polluted water caused by agricultural runoff (like Monsanto's recent $10B payout)— or similarly, public dollars earmarked for pure sources that are averted to 'save a buck' (as in Flint, MI), or are finding themselves on the wrong side of the tracks, where prison, menial labor, slums or an early death await them, the Game A system that worships the almighty dollar — or yen, or yuan, or euro — is broken beyond repair, and the price for our transgressions is our final living breath.
Game B
The principle of Game B is simple. If you took any institution today and convened a panel of extremely bright and diverse thinkers and experts, asked them to re-imagine it, and instead of giving them carte blanche, you established two unyielding 'rules': that every decision had to advance so-called infinite values for which one cannot construct a loser (again, like community, integrity, honesty, empathy, humility… all of which are values reflected in a New Zealand study on the subject, here), and that business relationships were thought of as lifelong relationships, without end, then what emerged would look incredibly different from what exists today.
It wouldn't take more than a single sentence, articulated with these principles, to see how each institution could be of more value to the collective. Let's try it. The more broadly and deeply educated a population is, the more valuable its ideas become. The healthier it is, the more productively it can contribute. The better capitalized and supported an inspired idea is, the greater the energy that its passionate agents will bring to bear on the investment of time and energy, and the likelier it will succeed. The more a population feels they 'own' something, the greater their commitment will be, to it. The more trust that is built between leaders in different fields, divisions or businesses, the less distracted and polluted their focus will be, and the less combative / subversive / destructive, as well. The more integrated efforts are across the ecosystem of institutions that comprise a community, the better informed each will be, and the better decisions each will therefore make, as it affects the whole. The more tailored the flow of information is toward what matters most to our collective wellbeing, the more targeted our energies can be toward what will make the biggest difference. And the closer we feel to one another over the long term, the better collaborators we will be, toward the fulfillment of mutually understood, mutually beneficial and increasingly shared goals.
If it's not obvious, I just described education, healthcare, banking, entrepreneurship, law, collaboration, media and social exchange, in that order.
We do this intuitively with our families — well, most of us do, anyway, and more likely would, if it weren't for how some of us fight over… you got it: money, or access to limited resources. In Mollner-funded businesses, the common good trumps individual considerations, every time, to the point where it insists upon 'reasonable' profit caps, above which all excess profits are set aside and permanently managed for the common good.
In a 2014 article titled The Differences Among Socially Responsible, Impact and Common Good Investing, Mollner wrote about three existing models of corporation that aim to do something more than just generate profit. He writes that socially responsible (SR) companies do not abandon financial return as the driving priority of the corporation, while doing good; instead, they establish a 'tolerance' for investing in a form of "minimum socially responsible standards of behavior". He adds that impact investing (II) goes a step further, focusing on "one or more good things that [the investing company] wants to perpetuate in society". He then distinguishes both from common good investing (CGI), which he believes to be "the inevitable future of all investing", because while SR is 'less bad' than conventional solely profit-driven companies, and while II is focused on some 'external good', only CGI begins with the foundational premise that the people doingthe work — i.e.: the primary value-creators — should be the primary beneficiaries of the fruits of their labor.
What a novel idea…
He explains the following: "If two people come together, they have two choices: they can compete or they can cooperate." He cites lions, tigers and bears as apex competitors; while cooperation, he says, is "when all the parts give priority to the whole," forming a "human society".
Mondragón is just such a society, in which the greatest good is that which supports the community. As to the "full integration within the modern world," the 30,000 people within Mondragón's cooperatives are well-paid, all have equity ownership in their workplaces, enjoy a solid educational and healthcare support network, have greater job satisfaction and less turnover and failure, are supported in their business ideas, as budding entrepreneurs, are set up for life with a safety net that they contributed to, and outperform the rest of their own nation while doing it. Moreover, they've been doing this for three quarters of a century.
This isn't the stuff of fairy tales.
Game B is sometimes called The Endless Game, or The Infinite Game,because any game that is enjoyable enough is one that its players wish to keep playing, rather than concluding. When we are focused on concluding a game, it is because it's either boring, or we wish to win it. Not so for an endless / infinite game. Your children are one example of an endless game. We don't invest time and effort in them and bid them adieu, never to be seen again. No. Rather, we invest in them because the relationship is its own reward — one that continues to pay dividends in the satisfaction that we have influenced one another for the better, and for the joy of continued interaction, and deepening richness. And sometimes, if we do a great job, they will prevent us from eating dog food when we're old and peeing ourselves, and may even support us in our final years, if we cannot do so ourselves. I know that's what my own family has done for one another, and we are not alone. We are the norm. We could say the same of our closest friends, as well as that co-worker or teacher or nurse who, with empathy, humility and selfless service, transformed our lives, and in the process, became a trusted advisor, or best friend, or even spouse.
I've seen that last one, too.
We are social creatures to our cores, and when we service our relationships, we enrich our lives, plain and simply. It is only when we corrupt our joy of connecting deeply with one another — whether it's at the hand of competitive power plays, lack of respect or kindness, or conflicting views on what matters, or how to act in concert, without investing the time to resolve and align those things — that we devolve into animal behaviors, like the lions. It is the Machiavellian attitude, in which "a person is so focused on their own interests that they will manipulate, deceive, and exploit others to achieve their goals," that leads to the breakdown in our foundational human relationships. It is this trait, along with its 'cousins', narcissism and psychopathy, that comprise what is known as the Dark Triad. And sadly, competition — which is not a necessary prerequisite to success, in any sphere — reinforces, and in fact greatly rewards, the cultivation and development of those dark traits.
In 1989, the Basque National Congress — the pre-eminent body of the autonomous Basque Country, technically still part of Spain, but largely self-governing — decided to officially adopt Mondragón's "third way" as the method by which economic policy would be developed and administered. According to Mollner, "This may be the first nation in modern times to commit itself to the development of relationship economics."
A century-plus earlier, in 1833, the widely circulated and as widely criticized Tragedy of the Commons was the brainchild of British writer William Forster Lloyd. In the Middle Ages, Britain was among one of many nations that held land and grazing rights 'in commons' — that is, freely available to, and often managed by, the communities that benefitted from, and contributed to, their upkeep. In his treatise, Lloyd speculated that this model led to the degradation of the land's value, and bounty. He called this the tragedy of the commons. His musings stuck, and were used to undo a form of commonly held ownership rights that had been enjoyed for centuries by the citizenry. The truth, however, never supported his theories, and the fact is that commonly held, mutually managed & enjoyed resources continue to be held in common, today, though they admittedly comprise a tiny percentage of the world's assets, or 'businesses'. In Mongolia, Wikipediawrites, land degraded in shared pastures by about 9%, between 1992 and 1995, when a study was undertaken by the group Environmental and Cultural Conservation in Inner Asia. By contrast, in China and Russia, where state-owned pastures and privately held land were farmed, degradation ran at 75% and 33%, respectively.
Mongolia is not the only example, but it's staggering to think that a shared asset whose modus operandi is to cultivate it in perpetuity — an 'infinite' game — can be from three to eight times more productive, and less destructive, than one in which an entity uses it to squeeze profit and consolidate power, damned be the asset — a 'finite' game.
We see this play out in deforestation, lakes of carcinogenic glyphosate, monocropping, over-fishing and wild species destruction.
Said another way, crassly, we are less likely to put a bullet in the head of someone we know well, or on whom we depend, than in that of a stranger whose life has no obvious material impact on ours, and whom we therefore don't value.
The difference comes down to relationships.
In a relationship economy, connections are deeper, are more interdependent, and are invested for the long term — as in, forever. As a result, in a relationship-age company like any of the 95 of them that Mollner's Calvert Impact Capital website features, or town, like Mondragón, or sector, like Mongolian agriculture, or nation, like the Basque autonomous region, the meaningfulness of our work and our relationships, and therefore, our lives, is amplified, greatly. When the group, or the community, or the government commits to one another, and develops a network of complementary activities, policies and structures to support the infinite relationships that contribute to, and benefit from, the combined energy of the people within it, everybody wins, and nobody loses.
To say it again: in a Game B economy, everybody wins, and nobody loses.
To suggest that the default human state is that of competition is to ignore 330 million years of human history, before the advent of permanent settlements, in which competition meant the death of the community, and therefore wasn't tolerated in any way. If you'd like to read a powerful treatise on this subject, I highly recommend Christopher Ryan's book, Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress. The conceit — lie — of competition is just that: something perpetuated by those who stood the most to gain by it, at the expense of the human community.
We are on the precipice of a Relationship Age, as Mollner posits, supported by a Relationship Economy. Luckily, enough smart, well-capitalized and business-as-usual-weary people are turning more and more attention to this subject, and incubating innovations to upend and replace the status quo. Our world, with its accelerating pressures, and a pandemic that has revealed — in a nanosecond — the stresses inherent in all of our Game A systems, is desperate for a rewrite. Game A has played itself out, and the price has been our health, as well as that of the planet.
And with luck, we won't only live to see this Brave New World, but will be part of the solution in building it.
Bring on Game B!


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Visiting Procedures
When visiting George Washington School, please follow the procedure below.
1. Access the building via the main entrance of the school.
2. Press the intercom bell and inform the greeter's desk of your arrival.
(A staff member will unlock the door so you may enter.)
3. Report directly to the greeter's desk.
4. Tell a staff member the reason for your visit.
5. If you are picking up your child, your child will be called from his or her classroom to the greeter's desk.
6. If you are staying at the school, you will be asked to scan your ID in the ID reader. You will then follow the prompts from the ID reader. After you complete the prompts, you will be allowed inside where the staff member at the greeter's desk will be waiting to hand you your vistor's badge.
7. Please DO NOT go directly to the nures's office if your child is sick. A main office staff member will contact the school nurse upon your arrival.

subset: commoncrawl


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EDAP TMS Focal One
Focal One® is a device using the technology of High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU), which is intended for local treatment of Prostate Cancer. It combines all the necessary tools to visualize, target, treat and validate the treatment. The process can be divided in 4 logical steps: treatment preparation with the Import of MR images and fusion with the real-time Ultrasound Volume, focal target definition, precise destructive energy application and validation of effectively de-vascularized area (with Contrast Imaging Option).
The main components of the Focal One® module are:
- Control Station
- Treatment and Ultrasound Imaging Probe
- Internal Ultrasound module
- 2 Touch-screen monitors
- Keyboard and Mouse
- Lateral table extension
For more information please visit EDAP TMS.
MRI import and Fusion
- MR Images import from PACS or CD
- Elastic fusion to match automatically the 3D contours of the prostate on the MRI and the scanned Ultrasound
Precise contouring of zone to be treated
- MR target automatically displayed on live ultrasound image
- Design precisely area to be treated and follow HIFU shots
- Modify planning in real time
Validation of treated area
- Contrast imaging to validate areas treated and define areas for treatment completion.
- Review of treatment images.
- Comparison with MRI follow-up images


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Exhibit will highlight human connections to Aleutian Islands
A new traveling exhibit will teach visitors how human communities have relied on the Aleutian Islands as a source of food and protection.
"Underwater Forests of the Aleutians" will open at the Museum of the Aleutians in Unalaska on July 13, 2017. Visitors will learn about ecosystems in the coastal environments surrounding the Aleutians and how human communities depend on the resources that thrive there.
Brenda Konar, a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, said the exhibit presents these prominent ecosystems as a starting point. "We also want to focus on the coastal waters that so many people rely on where kelp, sea otters and sea urchins have had a dynamic history."
Coastal ecosystems in the Aleutians can be populated with dense kelp forests, rocky urchin barrens or a combination of the two, something scientists call transition zones. Konar said the specific makeup of the coastal ecosystem is often dependent on predation from species higher up in the food chain, such as sea otters and killer whales.
These species and ecosystems provide valuable resources for Aleutian communities. For example, kelp forests play an important role in coastal areas as a nursery for fish and invertebrates that support nationally important commercial fisheries and coastal Alaska communities. Kelp also protect shorelines from coastal erosion and are an important food source for coastal communities.
Alaska Sea Grant agent Melissa Good hopes the images and artifacts on display are a visual that will spark interest in the Aleutians and help visitors understand the diversity and complexity of nearshore ocean environments.
"The Aleutian Islands harbor this beautiful, dynamic and productive system that many people currently rely on but seldom can picture," Good said. "This exhibit brings people into the kelp forests and tells a story about our past and present."
The exhibit will be interactive, featuring biological samples such as otter pelts and skulls, harpoon and spear artifact replicas, and equipment that researchers use to study the region.
Konar and Good have teamed with Museum of the Aleutians director Virginia Hatfield; San Diego State University professor Matthew Edwards, who specializes in temporal and spatial patterns in coastal marine communities; and archaeologists Mike Etnier, of Western Washington University, and Dixie West, of Kansas State University. Exhibit Alaska created the design and panels.
The exhibit is expected to remain in Unalaska until October, when it will travel to St. Paul in the Pribilof Islands. From there, the exhibit may travel to more Aleutian communities and then others around the state.
"We are excited that the exhibit will start at the Museum of the Aleutians, because these kelp forest ecosystems that the exhibit talks about are right in our visitors' backyards," Konar said. "But we also want to make sure people around the state have the chance to learn about this important ecosystem."
People who won't have an opportunity to visit the exhibit can still learn about the unique Aleutians marine environment from the book Sea Life of the Aleutians: An Underwater Exploration, recently reprinted and available in PDF and hardcover from Alaska Sea Grant. It features 130 color photographs taken by research divers of the diverse and beautiful nearshore waters of the pristine Aleutian Islands. The book provides fascinating natural history information and an overview of the geography, geology, and oceanography of the 1,200-mile archipelago.
— By Lauren Frisch


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Monthly Archives: May 2016
What You Should Know About Services This Year
Considerations in Looking for a Good Auto Repair Shop
If you have been in a car accident and you car needs repairs badly, do not be tempted to go to an auto repair shop with the cheapest prices. Cheap repairs do not usually last long. The problem with that is, even if you save at first, you will soon find yourself spending more for follow up repairs on that cheap fix. It is best to get it right the first time. How will you know a repair shop from the other? Below are some tips to consider when looking for a good auto repair shop.
The first consideration is look for an auto repair shop whose technicians are I-Car certified. I-Car is formally known as the Inter-Industry Conference on Auto Collision Repair. People who attend the conferences held by this organization gets trained to specialize in different car repair techniques. This is a nonprofit organization. Those who want to learn auto repair techniques follow their programs. That is why when one is I-Car certified, you will know that that technician knows what he/she is doing. Look for an I-Car certification from the technician or technicians in the auto repair shop.
In some jurisdictions there is a government regulation mandating the use of water-based paints in auto repair. Volatile organic compounds (VOC) make up traditional car paint which evaporates into the atmosphere quickly. This chemical is not good for the environment. Now you can find body repair shops that uses water-based paint which is friendly to the environment. Water-based paints also provide better coverage that any other kind of paint. You repair shop should use water-based paints.
There are car shops you can find that offer pickup and delivery for free. You need this because you have just been in an accident and about to pay for a mechanic.
The best auto repair shops offer a lifetime warranty. You should only pay for specific repairs once if it is properly done. However, it is also true that some jobs are complicated that needs trial and error to find the right solution. This is just natural and even the best body repair shops acknowledge that. A lifetime warranty is beneficial for this situation. Clients should not be paying for work on the same problem over and over again.
It is best if your auto repair shop can deal directly with your insurance company. It is quite stressful and difficult to deal with the insurance company especially after an accident. And it is to your advantage if you can find a repair shop or professional who can do so.
If you want to be spared from headaches and stress, choose a car repair shop with the above features and you will get a quick and efficient car repair service.
Source: car repair shops near me
The Path To Finding Better Options
Immunocal versus Immunocal Platinum: Similarities and Differences
Immunocal and Immunocal Platinum are very similar to each other – using either one of them will raise your glutathione levels just as effectively. Immunocal and Immunocal Platinum have the same level of potency or strength.
Immunocal Platinum was specifically formulated to address human aging and the different issues associated with it.
Immunocal Platinum's target population are the baby boomers – it is designed to help them remain healthy by optimizing organ, muscle, bone, and immune system functions.
The advanced formula of Immunocal Platinum helps decrease the production of acid (a typical result of diets that are high in protein) and assist those people whose diets do not include enough protein, frequently partake in strenuous activities, or are wanting to lose weight without losing bone mass. The ingredients in Immunocal Platinum are tested safe for daily use and are effective in helping maintain fitness, good health and youthfulness.
Comparison of Immunocal and Immunocal Platinum
Immunocal aids in the following areas: it is a good antioxidant, it helps boost your immune system, it gets rid of toxins inside your body, and it makes you stronger, more energetic, and more fit.
Immunocal Platinum, on the other hand, takes Immunocal one step further. Immunocal Platinum performs with the same potency as Immunocal, with just a few added benefits such as: helping neutralize the body's production of acid, decreasing bone loss, keeping the muscles healthy, and helping the body digest sugar better.
Components of Immunocal Platinum
The scientists that created Immunocal Platinum took into account both the protein metabolism process and components relating to human aging, and subsequently added two distinct formulations to Immunocal.
The first new formulation is Cytokine Modulating Proteins (CMP(TM)*), which are considered as the new-generation whey protein subfractions. These proteins assist in cell damage repair, foster cell growth and development, and prevent the growth of abnormal cells.
The second addition is Redox Modulating Formula (RMF). Redox Modulating Formula has address the problem of the increase in the body's production of acid among people whose protein intake is higher than average. High acid levels have traditionally led to many health problems such as the calcium loss present in osteoporosis. RMF helped solved this issue by aiding in ensuring the healthy condition of the muscles, bones, and immune system.
When to Choose Immunocal Platinum
Immunocal Platinum should be your first option when you want all the advantages of the original Immunocal, as well as components that would: help maintain pH balance, prevent bone loss, and ensure stronger bones, strengthen muscles, balance insulin metabolism and blood glucose, and optimize protein digestion.
Source: Immunocal
The 9 Most Unanswered Questions about Juice
Finding The Best Vaporizer The Market Has to Offer for Your Needs
One of the things you will find after deciding that you want to use a vaporizer is choosing the one that would be best for you. Similar to other things you purchase, buying a vaporizer will require you to make price comparisons and warranty checking. When it comes to this however, you should know that you will also need to take other things into account. Through this article, you will be able to find some of the most important things to consider when it comes to finding the best vaporizer for you.
One of the first things you need to determine when it comes to choosing a vaporizer is whether you need a portable one or a desktop one. If the kind if vaporizer you need is something you only use outdoors, then making the decision won't be that hard. However, making the decision becomes a lot more difficult when you are also someone who wants to be able to vape at home. While it's true that some portable vaporizers can work indoor and outdoor, their features and functionality differ in different levels.
One of the things you should know when it comes to portable vaporizers is that you would naturally have to refill and recharge more often. Because of this, the desktop vaporizer becomes a better choice if you vape more often.
In addition, you will also find more advantages in desktop vaporizers such as intake versatility. Unlike its portable counterpart, the desktop vaporizer allows you to make use of extensions and other methods.
When it comes to selecting the best vaporizer, one of the most important things you need to take into account is the source of power. This is one of the things you should really think about if you are planning to get yourself a portable vaporizer.
You should know that most of the portable vaporizers on the market have rechargeable batteries but there are some that are powered by butane. You will also find that the durability of different kinds of vaporizers vary from each type. The only downside when it comes to knowing the quality of battery of vaporizers is that you can't know for sure without owning one. In this, the warranty becomes really handy so don't forget to check if it also covers the replacement of battery.
Lastly, you should also consider some of the accessories you might need in your vaporizer. It's also important that you take into account the maintenance parts. You may be spending more money when you buy them separately so try to get them altogether. With these tips, you search for the best vaporizer will become easier.
Source: use all the same URLs as above.
Where To Start with Companies and More
A Guide to Insurance for the Beginners What to know about insurance? The insurance is actually a manner of dividing up monetary risk of a business entity or person to huge business entities or group of people in the incident of an unwanted circumstance that is predestined. The cost required of being insured is the annual or monthly compensative given to the insurance company. In the most untainted form of insurance, if the predefined situation will not occur until the time agreed the money given as a form of compensation is not obtained. Without a doubt, insurance is definitely a great method of spreading the risk among a great deal of individuals who have attained their insurance and lighten their monetary problems in the circumstance that a shock is going to happen. Insurer and insured
The Essentials of Services – Breaking Down the Basics
When you are looking for a protection against any financial problems, be sure that you sign an agreement together with an insurance company then you will become insured. The insurance company will then be your insurer.
A Quick Overlook of Policies – Your Cheatsheet
Sum guaranteed In any kinds of insurance companies, this is actually the sum of money that the insurer vows to pay by the time the insurer dies and it is not the time yet. This does not comprise extras added in the event of a non-term insurance. When it comes to non-life insurance, this surefire amount may be termed as insurance cover. Exceptional For the security against any monetary risks, an insurer gives and the insured is ought to disburse for the compensation. This is called as premium. The compensation can be paid monthly, quarterly, annually or as stated in the contract. The whole amount of premium disbursed is a lot times lesser in contrast to the insurance cover or it will make sense not to look for any insurance at all. The factors that define the premium are the age of the insured (car, person, and so on), time frame for which the insurance is sought, cover just to name a few. Candidate The receiver who is stipulated by the person who is insured to attain the sum assured as well as the other benefits, if any is the candidate. In the event of a life insurance, it must be another individual aside from the insured people. Terms of policies The term of policy is actually the number of years that you want to be covered. The term is decided during the time that you purchased the insurance policy. Disclaimer Specific insurance policies may give extra features as add-ons aside from the actual insurance. And this is very advantageous.
Options – My Most Valuable Advice
Various Ways to Get Loans Business owners and other investors, because of the tough economic world of today, would go to non-traditional lenders to support their operating costs or purchases. Unlike the traditional banks and mortgage brokers, non-traditional lenders have fewer conditions and good terms , if you borrow money from them, and thus they serve as a better alternative in getting loans. Non-traditional loans have two kinds, the hard money and private loans. Several borrowers though are sometimes confused with the differences of these two types of loans. So what are the differences between hard money and private money loans? These non-traditional loans offer timely and different financial needs to investors and business people. Since there are differences in these non-traditional loans, it is advisable to understand these differences so you can decide which type can best fit your needs. Businesses that are into alternative lending can make use of the hard money loan. Lenders in hard money loan are getting their sources from private institutions or individuals. Hard money lenders are lenient to borrowers, who cannot easily get loans from traditional lenders, by giving them easy terms as to when they can pay the loan. To be able to provide fair terms to borrowers, the hard money lender will base its interest formula and payment scheme on the industry standard at that time, at the same time earn profit.
A Simple Plan: Businesses
Private money loans, as the name shows, are offered by private lenders or individuals. Private money lenders do not advertise their offers and they are not a business entity. These private lenders are not regulated and thus they do not abide with the regulations of the lending industry about terms or rates.
A Simple Plan: Businesses
There is a wide variations of approval criteria among private money lenders, and since they do not have a set criteria, borrowers are often wondering if they can get their funds. To be able to get this loan, you have to negotiate more than talk about rates and repayment plans. It is sometimes difficult to choose between these two loans, but several borrowers find hard money loans better since it is based on the regulations of the lending industry. Hard money loans offer different types of money loans. These are gap loans, fix-and-flip loans, and commercial rehab loans. A gap loan helps businessmen to get fundings for the deficiencies of their available money versus their operating expenses. If you want to buy distressed properties, rehab it and sell for a profit, you can go to fix-and-flip loan lenders. For those borrowers who are into buying and repairing distressed commercial properties, they can avail of commercial rehab loans. Since your loan is beyond the regulations of the traditional financing lenders, you have to get the help of the hard or private money lenders.
The Ultimate Guide to Experts
Choosing a Good Dentist
Picking the right dentist for you and the family is important. You want someone who makes you feel comfortable and is also well-trained trained to give you the dentistry you need. Look for a dentist whose clinic is located close to your home or office. The dentists' credentials should be available on the web.
A qualified dentists is either a doctor of dental surgery (DDS) or a doctor of dental medicine (DMD). The two degrees are equivalent – they both require no less than two years of pre-dental college work, and then four years of dental school. Dentists have to pass national and state exams before they are licensed.
Dentists could also be board-certified as specialists in specific branches of dentistry. Dentists, to become specialists, have to take up advanced training and schoolwork for two additional years. Some common recognized dental specialties are pedodontics or pediatric dentistry; oral and maxillofacial surgery and pathology; and endodontics or root canal therapy.
Routine cleanings are generally provided by dental hygienists or assistants. The hygienist have a designation of RDH (Registered Dental Hygienist) or RDHEF (Registered Dental Hygienist with Extended Functions). A dental assistant's tasks could include assisting a dentist during a procedure, taking x-rays, setting up anesthesia and doing other general tasks.
Questions to Ask
When visiting a dentist for the first time, don't think twice about asking few questions, like:
> How long has the practice been around?
> How much and what type of training and experience does the dentist have with the exact procedure you need?
> What dental societies does the dentist belong to?
> What types of emergency care does the dentist offer?
Definitely, you should not pick a dentist because of price alone, but you do have to understand the costs prior to getting treatment. If you have dental insurance, ask the office to explain what will be covered or not, and what out-of-pocket expenses might be.
What You Should Expect
The dentist as well as the office staff should be friendly and patient-centered. They should be concerned about preventive care, advising you for such things as comprehensive dental exams, routine cleanings, x-rays, periodontal exams, etc., all of which are helpful in keeping you from getting pricey repair procedures later on. The dentist should explain his findings and recommend an appropriate plan or treatment as necessary.
Several dentists would rather not schedule cleanings at the same time as a new patient complete exam. That's because x-rays and a thorough exam are needed to tell what type of cleaning is most clinically appropriate for your specific needs. For example, should periodontal disease be detected, the patient may require far more than a regular mouth cleaning.
Source: Dentist Seattle
Finding Ways To Keep Up With Businesses
Top Tips in Selecting the Right Insurance Company There are so many insurance companies today, ranging from small to large. Knowing that there are so many options available for you, how can you possibly go into picking the best and the right company? What you can find below is a guide on how finding and selecting an insurance company must be done. Research About the Company More often than not, insurance firms do have a good financial health since they always need to have enough money to address future obligations. But since there is always an exemption to almost everything, you have to perform wide researches about different companies to know if they really come with the ability to provide for their policy holders' future claims.
How to Achieve Maximum Success with Insurance
See the Ratings Obtained by Insurance Companies
How to Achieve Maximum Success with Insurance
There are private organizations today that rate insurance companies on their financial health. Many of these agencies display the results of their evaluations on their web and allow everyone to see them. By said rating, you can be helped in deciding which company to apply an insurance company from. Nevertheless, it is good to stress out the idea that rating is just one of the many factors that you could refer to know which company to select best, so it must not be the sole basis of your decisions. Also different agencies may have different ways of rating insurance firms, so you need to consider this as well. Consider the Features That Come With the Policy As already said, rating is just one of the many factors you need to check when selecting an insurance company. Another one is the feature. Before you decide to sign up for a contract, you need to be aware of the features and coverage of the policy you are choosing and have been fully convinced that they are all right for you. Check the Company's History Size is not really a matter of consideration when you talk of insurance firms. What is most important is that the company is experienced enough. If the company has existed for quite a long time, then that is an indication that they have turned strong enough to battle the rise and fall of the industry and acquired adequate understanding in all its ins and outs. Check If the Company Has Had Customer Complaints If the company has been through client complaints and even lawsuits, then that might be a sign that you need to watch out for the firm and to think twice before selecting it. But, if you think of it, it can really be hard to please everyone of your clients. So, being a prospective client, you need to review those complaints and check for yourself if they are something that could give you a reason to walk away and look for another.
What Has Changed Recently With Companies?
Cover Yourself with Car Insurance When in Mexico Visiting Mexico during the holidays is a great experience. But before you go on a driving adventure to Mexico, it is advisable that you prepare yourself with an insurance for your car. Many people do not realize that you cannot use your American auto insurance in Mexico. This is because most Mexican car repair shops will not accept American car insurance. Based on Mexican Law, it is required that all tourists should have a vacation car insurance policy. This vacation insurance is given by an insurance carrier in Mexico, that will serve for the duration of your holiday stay. This policy is valid during your choice of stay whether daily, weekly or monthly and up to 6 month. But if your stay goes beyond 6 months, it is necessary for you to get already a regular insurance policy.
The Ultimate Guide to Policies
You have two options when it comes to purchasing an insurance for cars in Mexico.
The Ultimate Guide to Policies
You can opt to use your US policy while crossing the border, and when you are in a town there you can stop and buy the car insurance for Mexico use. Existing at the border at hundreds of small offices that releases car insurance in Mexico for visiting tourists, and they work on it fast. It is your choice and risk if you buy car insurance after you reach the border. To avoid risks, it is recommended that you purchase your can insurance first before leaving for Mexico. Before your vacation time, it is better that you make arrangements with your insurance company to purchase your Mexican insurance for your car, then they can negotiate with some companies to choose from. You can browse through the internet about auto insurance in Mexico. Online information has made it easy to learn about car insurance in Mexico. All you need to know are the various kinds of insurance policy and the coverage under each as far as Mexican law is concern. In road accidents like injury or death, your policy should be able to protect you. Your insurance should also cover you with a legal defense in case the matter is brought to court. The USA and Canada have different laws compared to that of the auto laws in Mexico. When driving around Mexico, they need an additional insurance on top of proof of your own car insurance. Car insurance in Mexico has a coverage of personal injury protection wherein it will shoulder the medical expenses incurred for the medical treatment of the driver and passengers during the accident. Theft, damage by floods, animals or fire, and other comprehensive physical damages are also covered. Looking online about auto insurance in Mexico will give you information of the different coverage.
If You Read One Article About Investments, Read This One
Finding The Right Savings and Investment Plans It is a given fact that money is one of the things people are desperate to have nowadays. People know for a fact that money allows people to buy things and pay their bills. Since money can buy anything, it is not surprising to know that it can help you sustain all your needs. When further problems occur in terms of finances in your life, it is good to have enough money to keep you going. It is important for you to know that financial institutions have been trying to help people acquire more money every single day. When financial institutions introduced savings and investment plans, more individuals are able to secure the money they are earning all the time. When you are thinking of getting a savings and investment plan, you will need to remember some considerations along the way. One of the things you need to remember is to save your money regularly.
A Quick Overlook of Investments – Your Cheatsheet
One of the things that you need to know is that no matter what your age is, saving regularly is a must for people. When your funds are accumulated, it would cause you to acquire more money in the process. Even with a small amount, you can accumulate bigger wealth if you save regularly. With your regular contribution, you can easily get more money that you do not think you will ever have in the process. You have to realize that saving and investing in financial institutions will definitely give you so many advantages nowadays. The compounded interest in your savings plan will help your money grow over a long period of time.
A Quick Overlook of Investments – Your Cheatsheet
It is a good thing for you to diversify the funds that you have to accumulate more money in the process. There are many saving vehicles that people can acquire when they want to save money in order for them to sustain their needs in the future. When emergency situations occur, it would give people the chance of getting more funds when they use different saving vehicles. It is important for you to get acquainted with various investment plans offered by financial institutions. To further experience many benefits as you save money, diversifying your funds is definitely a great decision you will even make. When you are considering the idea of getting an investment plan, you will need to acquire the tax benefits that you have. Using savings and investment plans allow people to experience tax benefits that will help them in making their money grow all the more. As you know all these things, saving and investing money with the use of saving vehicles will definitely give you the things you desire.
Learning The Secrets About Guides
How to Find Reliable Health and Beauty Tips
The majority of the women in the world enjoy getting some health and beauty tips. Good thing, there are many available free advice in relation to cosmetics, grooming and dental care as well as proper eating. For you to be looking your best always, have that kind of attitude to take the whole advantage of the various tips that you get. You have to consider first the types of health and beauty advice that you actually need at the present time. Do you want to improve your hair texture, are into some skin regimen, in need of assistance for your weight control, and or, in need of teeth whitening? These concerns can be helped out outline.
List the things you wanted to improve in your health and so as your holistic appearance. Take enough time to check yourself in the mirror, and you can easily observe those things needed to be improved. It can be as easy as applying some make up on your face, yet must be even.
This can be like helping out the problem of your delicate skin issues in regards to the sun's harsh heat. Yet, there are many main websites that are efficient enough to help you out and will provide great health and beauty tips online.
Think about issues you wanted to be addressed in terms of dealing with beauty as well as health routines. Skin care can be one of the list, an issue should never be ignored. After all, the people see your face first, and the next thing is your teeth. Brushing your teeth twice plus flossing, is considered as the basic one. There are proven home whitening kits that are available at your nearest drugstore, way affordable that having the dentist's procedure. Next, is your hair, this should be taken care properly so that it will not stick around. Finally, is your body, which is very crucial to any health and beauty practices. To stay in a strong and fit condition, your body requires proper diet and regular exercise.
Those points are only some of the tips you should keep in your mind. When it comes to skin care, having trial and error way is also applicable,for you to find out the right products for you. This is only normal; you can make thing more easy when you can finally discover the type of skin you possess. You can certainly make a world of difference, if you are able to have the proper health and beauty advice, the one which is best for you.
Source: lenses


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"Tiles" is the 3rd studio release by Italian experimental cult band Larsen presenting itself as a 5-piece unit featuring legendary chanteuse, dub diva of Crass and On-U Sound fame, Annie Bandez aka Little Annie as vocalist and lyricist.
Annie joined Larsen in 2008 after seeing the band performing at an Austrian festival.
She appeared on the following albums "La Fever Lit" and "Cool Cruel Mouth" (2008/ 2011) and the relative European tours.
"Tiles" follows up Larsen's latest album, the fully instrumental "Of Grog Vim" (2016), and features four pieces on the edge between "song" and "orchestrated spoken words" marked by Annie's personal urban storytelling and vocals.
Written, performed and produced by Larsen
– Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo: guitar, electric viola
– Little Annie: vocals
– Marco Schiavo: drums, cymbals, percussions, glockenspiel
– Paolo Dellapiana: keyboards, synths, electronics
– Roberto Maria Clemente: guitar
Recorded by Paul Beauchamp (music) and Marco Milanesio (vocals)
Mixed and mastered by Marco Milanesio
O.F.F. Studio Torino, Italy, 2017/2018
Artwork by Roberto Maria Clemente for Fionda


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text:
Magic Leap is either brilliant or BS. It's ready to prove its AR gear is real
Big money, big dreams, big expectations and a lot of hype. Here's an inside look at what's been going on at tech's most secretive unicorn.
This is part of our expanded coverage of Magic Leap and its new mixed-reality system being released today.
Rony Abovitz's office at Magic Leap's headquarters is filled with stuff that gives off a playful vibe.
There's a Willy Wonka lunch box (Gene Wilder edition), a 3D stereoscope from 1901, a shiny ray gun crafted by Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop and collectibles that pay homage to Star Trek and Star Wars, including a lightsaber and a Porg plushie. There are comics and books, including Art of Atari and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.
And in the bottom corner of a whiteboard against one wall, there's a sketch of a jellyfish-shaped spacecraft labeled "Mothership," signed by Steven Spielberg.
But the thing that really stands out is the big unicorn head. It's impossible to ignore. I'm talking to the head of one of tech's most notable unicorns -- defined as a rare startup valued at over $1 billion -- and there's a giant mask of the mythical creature staring at me from a few feet away. It feels like a scene out of HBO's Silicon Valley, except we're on the other side of the country in Plantation, Florida.
Magic Leap, if you're not up to speed on who's trying to invent the future, is an eight-year-old company that's been working on an "experiential and spatial computer" that hopes to break new ground in what it means to be a "person plus computer." We're talking sci-fi, next-level, let's-change-the-world thinking. Its ambitious vision, set out by co-founder and CEO Abovitz, is centered around a slick, lightweight, mixed-reality system that promises to immerse you in "experiences" that meld computer-generated imagery with the physical world in a way that's designed to convince you those 3D objects and characters are there. In the room with you.
That's the pitch anyway. And it's been compelling enough to convince Google, Alibaba, Warner Bros., AT&T, the top Silicon Valley venture capital firms and about a dozen other big name investors to hand over $2.3 billion so that Magic Leap can turn that MR vision into a sellable product. That makes it one of the top-funded startups in the US, earning that unicorn status, with a $6.3 billion valuation as of June.
Besides cash, the company's also drawn lots of scrutiny -- and scorn -- from tech watchers, who called BS after Magic Leap shared amazing teasers that turned out to be canned demos.
Case in point: A March 2015 video billed as "Just another day in the office at Magic Leap" showed a mind-blowing MR game that was actually a "concept video" created by the special effects wizards at Weta. And last month, the company promised to "share a demo of an upcoming developer sample," but that turned out to be a prerecorded demo. People weren't happy -- prompting Abovitz to post a tweetstorm arguing that it's impossible to show what this new "medium" is like and saying all will be revealed when we see it for ourselves.
Which is why today is a big day for Magic Leap.
After earning the moniker the "world's most secretive startup" from Wired and telling Forbes in 2016 it was going to ship its system "soon-ish," the company is finally releasing the $2,295 Magic Leap One. It includes a high-powered, moon-pie-shaped computer called Lightpack, a handheld remote called Control and a steampunk-inspired headset with round lenses and patented optics. That's called Lightwear.
There's just one thing: Regular folks like us aren't the intended audience. At least not yet. This "Creator Edition," says Abovitz, is part of a "controlled market release" in just a handful of cities in the United States -- Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle -- for the developers and creative types Magic Leap will woo this year and next. The goal: for those makers to dream up the experiences (aka content) that's needed to convince us to become Leapers. The company is already showing investors and partners prototypes of its smaller (and hopefully less expensive) Magic Leap Two and Magic Leap Three, but won't say when they'll be released.
For now, Magic Leap just needs to get out from under the pile of hype it helped create and show the world that it's not a hoax.
"We know we have to prove to everybody why we have a reason for being," Abovitz says, sitting behind his desk, where a MacBook, a yellow legal pad and a four-color Bic pen lie within easy reach. "We've got to get out there and prove it."
Abovitz, an affable biomedical engineer reared in Florida, is candid about the skepticism surrounding his efforts in the fledgling market for MR, augmented reality and virtual reality. Tech heavyweights including Apple, Facebook and Microsoft also have big ambitions in this space. And he agrees that some people have been a "bit mean" in calling Magic Leap the next Theranos, the $10 billion health-tech startup whose founder was charged with massive fraud after making false claims about its product.
The hype, he claims, helped get the likes of Google, the NBA, Lucasfilm, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Spielberg, motion-capture actor Andy Serkis and famed TV puppeteer Sid Krofft interested in what Magic Leap is working on. The secrecy is because Magic Leap "might be five years or 10 years ahead of other people," and Abovitz wants to keep it that way.
"No one's ever done what we're doing," he says. "In terms of what we're actually shipping, no one's even close in terms of the size, weight, graphics, computational power."
It's "completely ridiculous" that Magic Leap has been called a hoax by those who haven't seen it yet, he adds, noting the tech has been demoed to more than 10,000 people, all sworn to secrecy.
"I kind of think of our company as like Rocky in the first movie, where he's just getting punched in the face for a long time," Abovitz says with a mischievous smile. "But then we actually get to shift and hopefully we get to punch back a little bit, metaphorically, in a nice way."
Game on, then.
Which is why CNET senior reviews editor Scott Stein and I were invited to the mothership on July 18 ahead of Wednesday's big reveal. We got to see and play with the Magic Leap One, tour the campus and speak with more than a dozen executives to suss out if the whole premise is really, as touted on the company's website, "magic in the making."
Long story short: Scott says it's a big step forward, but not a leap.
From the outside, Magic Leap is easy to overlook. It's headquartered in an unremarkable two-story building in a nondescript office park dotted with palm trees about a 20-minute drive from Fort Lauderdale.
Inside, it's a different story. Magic Leap took over a former Motorola Mobility factory, retrofitting the 260,000-square-foot facility in 2015 to house its R&D and design labs, testing centers, in-house entertainment studio and factory. With the bespoke machinery it invented, the place churns out prototypes and will one day produce "tens of millions" of wafers containing its proprietary light field technology (more on that later).
It pretty much looks like what you'd imagine a well-funded tech startup should look like -- lots of light, colorful art on the walls, open concept work spaces with conversation pits and glass-encased conference rooms tagged with interesting names like Deimos and Spica. The white astronaut suit that Abovitz wore for a "surrealist" December 2012 TEDx talk called "The Synthesis of Imagination" stands in the hallway near his office. (Abovitz offered a yo-yo to anyone who could figure out what the six-minute performance, highlighting the word "fudge," was all about. I have no clue. He tells me, "It's really simple." Even so, no one's claimed the yo-yo. It's on his desk.)
You're going to have to take my word for what the place looks like, including that Spielberg sketch. Magic Leap sequestered our video and photo crew in a conference room, with snacks, during our five-hour visit and only let them out to take images in a few approved areas.
We were able, though, to capture the nod to Magic Leap's origin story as we walked in the door.
Abovitz started Magic Leap Studios to indulge his passion for comic books. He funded it using the money he earned after selling his medical robotics company, Mako Surgical in 2013 for $1.7 billion. Right next to a floor-to-ceiling wall of preserved plants that look like bunches of broccoli, the lobby desk displays scenes from a graphic novel Abovitz wrote with British comic book writer Andy Lanning, who helped create Guardians of the Galaxy.
The comic imagined kids in a strange Willy Wonka-esque factory called Magic Leap, which makes biomechanical creatures called Leapers that attach to people through a bio-tether proboscis and induce hallucinatory visions of an imaginary world. I'm not making this up. Lanning, now executive creative director of Magic Leap Studios, gave us a copy.
"If you look at the device now, the shape of the lenses are a beautiful echo of the Leapers' eyes," he says, laughing. "We are now saying, that's what we were pointing to and alluding to back in the comic. We didn't have a clue, but now we can say, 'Yes, of course, it was all part of a wonderful masterplan.'"
The story was going to be the basis for a computer-generated feature film series. Abovitz even went to New Zealand and met with Jackson's Weta Workshop to talk about it. But the project turned into something more. And that was making what the Leapers can do -- transport you to what Lanning calls the magicverse -- a real thing.
Unlike virtual reality -- which hides the real world from you by replacing it with a digital one -- and augmented reality --which overlays objects on top of those you see in the physical word -- MR aims to combine the physical and virtual worlds so they feel like they exist together. That's according to Microsoft, anyway. Microsoft is Magic Leap's biggest competitor with its HoloLens headset that, at first blush, does essentially the same thing as the Magic Leap One.
Think Who Framed Roger Rabbit or Jumanji. Except instead of just watching CGI characters mix it up with reality on a fixed screen, Abovitz and his 1,500 employees around the world have been working to create 3D characters and objects you can interact with in real time.
They know where you are so they can follow you and keep eye contact. They know about your surroundings so they can walk around a couch or table rather than through it. And they have enough fidelity -- volume, substance -- that you think they're there. Magic Leap describes that as "presence."
And in its world, there are no more screens. The world becomes the screen -- or multiple screens -- with none of the nausea or motion sickness that VR sometimes causes. That's because Magic Leap claims its magical leap was figuring out how to use digital and natural light to render those 3D objects in real time, and to beam them into your eyes in a way that lets you process what you're seeing as you would the natural world.
The possibilities of what you can do with that kind of tech are amazing, with the potential to rethink games, movies, immersive theater, e-commerce and sports. The NBA wants you to enjoy MR basketball games. The Royal Shakespeare Company imagines you watching a live performance of an actor reciting Hamlet's soliloquies -- just for you.
Working with Wayfair, Magic Leap showed a shopping app that lets you pull furniture out of a virtual catalog (complete with real-world height, weight, width, fabric texture and color) and place it in your living room. You can walk around and see whether that red armchair fits in with everything else.
Magic Leap has already thought through other future applications. In one of its over 2,000 patents, it describes being able to display and modify medical records in MR. Or having you look at 3D spreadsheets that highlight the peaks and valleys of the numbers almost like a topographical map. Another patent describes its system as sensory eyewear that "can recognize and interpret sign language, and present the translated information to a user of the mixed reality device."
Jeremy Bailenson, a professor at Stanford University studying the psychology of VR, AR and MR, remembers his first aha! moment with augmented reality. It was a demo of someone talking to a photorealistic AR character. The avatar interacted naturally, maintained eye contact, kept an appropriate distance and gestured so you couldn't tell the difference between who was real and who wasn't.
"My jaw dropped," says Bailenson, who hasn't yet seen Magic Leap's system. "It was the first time I said, 'Wow.' Beaming in people is what's going to make AR special."
Magic Leap thinks so too. Virtual assistants you can see and talk to -- Hello Alexa? -- are just the starting point as artificial intelligence comes into play.
"See what you see, hear what you hear, know where you are -- for us, that's the beginning of human-centered AI," Abovitz says.
"You need a computer that can hang out with you in space and not be contained in a rectangle. It's really designed for the messiness and the chaos that's actual life, and we think experiential computing is really what it's all about," he says. "Person plus computer is Magic Leap's philosophy."
But that's still off in the future, as is that fully realized magicverse.
Like Microsoft's Hololens, which is being sold primarily to developers and businesses right now, Magic Leap One suffers from a limited field of view, according to my colleague Scott. That means what you see through the headset isn't as large as the space you're in. Abovitz says to think of the viewing window as a cone that widens as it moves away from you. That also means that getting too close to an object might cause it to sort of disappear.
"Not being able to see a fuller view of the room's virtual objects is a serious drawback," Scott says. "Sometimes I lose track of things I can't see, and require sound to help me track where the augmented things are hiding, and where to turn."
And those 3D characters and objects? "Ghostly is a term that echoes in my mind," says Scott. "Images floated and displayed well, creating a sense of impressive depth, but their sense of reality always bordered on the video game side, like a Disney cartoon."
Abovitz says Magic Leap is coming "closer and closer and closer" to meeting the Schowengerdt Test, named after company co-founder Brian Schowengerdt. The test measures the "neurologic truth" the system is able to create, with objects at the top of the scale being indistinguishable from reality. Magic Leap isn't there yet, except in a few cases with metallic objects. Even so, "ML1 gives you, I'd say, the beginning of real usability," Abovitz says.
At the same time, Abovitz questions how realistic images need to be anyway. Maybe it will be enough for characters and objects to be physiologically correct but always distinctly digital. "It's a little more bright, it's a little more solid, it looks like it came out of kind of a special computing world that lives with us."
He's not the only one who questions how far hyperreality should take us. "How does conversation and social interaction function when we have all this augmentation?" wonders Stanford's Bailenson. "What I want AR companies to do is think forward and try to design around these aspects."
The journey to the Magic Leap One involved understanding evolutionary biology, theoretical physics, biomedical engineering, digital signal processing, photonics and hardware engineering, the company says.
Abovitz explained the science behind Magic Leap in detail in a December 2017 story by Variety. We hear the same recap as he takes us through a presentation that he's given to investors as well. The aim was to get away from design think that's been reused for the past 200 years, starting in the 1830s with the stereoscope. Stereoscopes take two images of the same thing from slightly different angles to create what Abovitz describes as an "unnatural" 3D image. The same "awful" approach was co-opted in today's VR headsets.
"It actually breaks how your brain functions," Abovitz argues. "It doesn't allow your eye-brain system to function properly."
So he and a friend who studied theoretical physics at CalTech looked at how much information our eyes take in and how our brain processes what we're seeing to make sense of it. This turned out to be the study of light fields, which is basically how we see everything. When light hits an object, it bounces off in various colors and wavelengths and our brains then interpret that to make sense of the world.
The breakthrough for Magic Leap was in figuring out that the brain is a variable-load computer. Our visual system already filters the overwhelming amount of data we're bombarded with and feeds just a "tiny stream of light to our visual cortex," Abovitz says. About 40 percent of our brain power is devoted to visual processing, he adds, but it can go up or down depending on the intensity of the situation because our brains fill in details based on our preconceived models of the physical world.
"A tiger at 500 yards looks like a 2D cutout," he explains. But a tiger close up, "I've got my whole brain rendering that tiger and every rich detail. So as you move objects farther and farther away and closer and closer up, they kind of inflate with detail and deflate."
Bottom line: When something's closer to you, you need more detail for it to be believable. When it's farther away, you need less.
Magic Leap's challenge was in figuring out how to capture just enough of the light field, render it in real time as you move around and feed it to the visual cortex through your eye to make those near-, mid- and far-field interactions believable.
They set out to create the technology to do that.
"We've actually made a digital light field component. No one's even close to that," Abovitz says. "People have taken stuff from military heads-up displays," he says, referring to instrument readings superimposed on a plane's windshield. "That's not what we're doing. Or they'll take cell phone technology and put it up to your eye. That's the quick and dirty hit. We went down the harder road."
The first Magic Leap prototype was a large machine weighing several hundred pounds and nicknamed the Beast. When we get a chance to see it, along with later prototypes, I'm reminded of an eye-testing machine from my optometrist's office. You'd put your chin in a white cup and gaze through a pair of rectangular prisms while the system, playing with light fields, tries to trick your brain into seeing something that isn't there.
After crashing "8-, 9-, 10,000 times" -- as in nothing happened or an image appeared that was wrong or skewed -- the team in fall 2014 rendered a green dot, made up of a single pixel, that could be moved around with a joystick. Abovitz describes it as a "Pong" moment, recalling the excitement many felt playing Atari's early arcade game in 1972.
It was also a Google moment. In October 2014, Google led a $542 million investment round in what the Wall Street Journal then called "one of the largest venture-capital deals on record." Google CEO Sundar Pichai took a seat on Magic Leap's board. He declined to comment for this story.
After the dot, they created a cube and then a character called Gerald, who looks a little like Shrek.
"Looking at Gerald, you really felt there was a presence. And as he got closer, detail got better and he inflated," Abovitz recalls. "So the inflationing was really interesting, which is that real objects, as they get closer, you absorb more of the signal and your brain renders more information. And as you move to midfield and far-field, your brain removes detail. It doesn't need as much light field signal. It doesn't use as much computational energy."
The next prototype -- the Cheesehead -- took what the team had learned from the Beast and made it portable, kind of. That headset resembles Napoleon Bonaparte's bicorn hat, except for all the wires and the fact it weighs tens of pounds. But the Cheesehead showed they could miniaturize the light field signal generator they'd invented and put it on a wafer as part of the projection system that sends light into our eyes and then to the visual cortex.
Magic Leap also understood it needed computer vision in its system, with sensors such as those in self-driving cars and drones that know where they are in the world. As the team built its next wearable demo prototypes -- WD1, WD2 and WD3 -- the company says it also pushed forward with its software. Developers worked on the operating system and started writing apps to showcase the potential for "spatial creating," while the hardware team refined the photonics and devised the machinery it needed to build the tech.
The dust-free assembly lines, located on the ground floor right below Abovitz's office, are staffed by a few employees in white bunny suits who oversee the cleanrooms and robotic arms. Hardware engineering chief Paul Greco, who worked at Motorola Mobility for 16 years, says they're already creating a fully automated line designed to produce millions and then tens of millions of the wafers -- which are part of the lenses -- for its headsets. Greco says the production yield for the wafers is "very high" but won't elaborate. While Magic Leap has built its own prototypes at its headquarters, the company is sending the wafers to a contract manufacturer that can handle high-volume production for the ML1.
"We've been on a really fast trajectory of massive miniaturization, inventing machinery and inventing techniques," adds Abovitz, who joined our tour of the factory. "Thank God we had some early investors who believe in us."
Which brings us to today's Magic Leap One.
We're in the all-white design showroom, where the two sizes of the ML1 headset are displayed on pedestals. The Control and Lightpack are on the table nearby. Large glossy photos of men and women wearing the Lightwear headset adorn the walls, while the stylish packaging -- a costly white cardboard box with foam cutouts stamped with the Magic Leap Leaper logo -- is on another table. It feels very Apple.
The headset sizes are based on the distance between people's pupils, and there are five replaceable nose pieces to accommodate different head sizes and nose shapes, so the whole device can be customized for comfort and fit, says Gary Natsume, a Frog Design alumnus who's been in charge of industrial and human factors design at Magic Leap for five years. Since you can't wear glasses with the headset, Magic Leap will custom create lenses based on your prescription as long as your eyesight isn't too far out of whack. (I was OK, but Scott had to wear contact lenses.)
The Lightwear, with its gender-neutral round lenses, weighs in at less than a pound and uses what Natsume calls a "crown temple" -- a wide headband that opens and closes to fit snugly. It's designed to distribute the weight around your head. After 20 minutes of wearing it, I can say it's more comfortable than VR headsets, which resemble old stereoscopes and whose front-loaded weight pulls your head forward.
The Lightpack computer, designed to mimic the shapes of the lenses, is made of up two rounded pods connected on one end so there's a gap in the middle. Magic Leap will sell customized straps that let you wear the Lightpack across your body. That gap is so the computer can partially slide into your pants pocket.
The design, though, is really all about allowing air to circulate around what's essentially a high-powered PC, Natsume says. One pod contains the rechargeable battery that lasts up to three hours, and the other contains the computer, graphics processors, onboard 3D speakers and solid-state memory. It's also got built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
The silvery color of the magnesium and plastic is called "moon dust." Magic Leap will also offer a special edition in red that's still being worked on.
The inspiration for the curved edges and inflated look of the goggles, computer, remote control and even the charger were inspired by Speed Racer, Japanese anime and Anish Kapoor, who designed Chicago's silvery, bean-shaped Cloud Gate sculpture. Magic Leap refers to its design language as "playfully premium," Natsume and Abovitz tell us.
"It's a high-tech instrument. This is loaded with technology, but it's not intimidating technology. We wanted it to be approachable," Natsume says. "We're very conscious of how the product looks on your face. We want to make sure that it looks comfortable in proportion to a human's head."
All that customization means you can't just walk into a store to pick up a Magic Leap One. Buyers will be treated to "white glove" service, which means they'll be outfitted by someone trained to personalize the system. Magic Leap is working with Enjoy, an e-commerce shopping service founded by Apple's ex-retail chief Ron Johnson, to provide that white-glove staff. They will come to your home, office or someplace else you choose in a few hours or few days, depending on the city.
The success of any MR, AR or VR device is getting developers and creatives to make apps and content that will give us a reason to buy their devices.
Microsoft, which first showed off its HoloLens in 2014, has been working with developers and businesses to build a suite of apps, mostly to help doctors, construction workers and service technicians. It starts at $3,000 for developers, and $5,000 for businesses, making it a tough sell to consumers. (That may partly be why rumors suggest Microsoft is working to cut down on cost and bulk before the HoloLens' wider release).
Facebook's Oculus $399 Rift VR system has fared slightly better with developers. More than 1,500 apps are available for the Rift, including games that put you in the pilot's seat of an epic space battle and drawing apps that let you doodle in the air.
"What I've learned is that content drives hardware, always," says James Iliff, co-founder and chief creative officer at VR game maker Survios, who worked in the University of Southern California lab that was the birthplace of modern VR. "All that matters for Magic Leap is they get their hardware into the hands of developers and start getting stuff made."
That's the plan we hear from executives tasked with creating content and convincing outside developers to join in. Magic Leap shared a preview of its software developers kit and launched a Creator Portal in March, with a simulator so developers could preview what their apps might look like on the ML1. Today, it's releasing tools for developers on its Creator Portal, including Magic Kit and Interaction Kit, to offer best practices, code snippets and other guidelines for creating apps and immersive experiences with the popular Unreal and Unity gaming engines, as well as with Magic Leap's own software.
The company also launched Magic Leap World, an online store for sharing the apps and immersive experiences it's building at its own studio as well as from third-party developers and creators. About 100 developers have been playing with the system and working on apps for the past year. Magic Leap says it's following Apple's App Store model by being choosy about which content it distributes on the store. It's also hosting its first Leap conference in October in Los Angeles, followed by developer roadshows around the country and "consumer experiential roadshows" where regular folks like you and me can try out the ML1 and see what the fuss is all about.
The focus now is on showing "developers and creators how easy it is to come on our platform and create," says Aleissia Laidacker, a longtime games programmer and designer who leads interaction design at Magic Leap. "We're ready for developers."
Jeremy Vanhoozer, the senior creative director who oversees content development, says the release of ML1 means, "Now we have kind of permission to get out and talk to developers and kind of break through some of the wall that's formed."
It's hard to say what Magic Leap's chances are for success. Brian Blau, an analyst at Gartner who once worked for a VR company, says it's an open question. But the company has done the right thing by following Apple, Microsoft and Facebook in working to build an ecosystem.
"They're not just a device maker," Blau says. "They're a software provider and an app platform. That's likely the reason Magic Leap got so much money. That's the winning strategy."
Before our visit ends, we're back in Abovitz's office, where the unicorn head continues to stare ahead. We ask if Magic Leap might release a second controller. "We're working furiously to be able to have another control and other components," he says.
We ask what else to expect and he tells us hundreds of people are already at work on ML2.
"We know we have to make it really small. We want to make a near-perfect light field signal. We want it to have incredibly strong computing because if you don't sense the world and sense the person, you don't have a lot of utility."
We ask what kind of personal information about users Magic Leap and its developers will collect. He's adamant the business model isn't based on harvesting users' surfing habits and preferences for profit.
"There are other companies, like the information-age companies, which are built on harvesting data from people like they're corn and selling that in the marketplace. We don't want to harvest you," he says. "And hey, if you're a developer, and you've made your money harvesting data, that's not what going to happen here. So let's help you figure out a model where you just make something really cool. We're giving you a ton of compute space and power. You can make cool things. How does someone just buy that from you?"
And we ask about the lawsuit by former marketing executive Tannen Campbell, who sued the company in February for sex discrimination, a hostile work environment and retaliation. The suit was settled out of court in May. Abovitz says he can't talk about it, but suggests it was a disgruntled employee unhappy with management changes. We press him about the culture and he pulls out a deck of seven brightly colored cards that list the company's values. Every employee has a copy of the deck and is taught what the values mean, he says.
Own Your Superpower
Together With Love
Fearless Curiosity
Move With the Speed Of Light
Indomitable Spirit
Magic in the Details
Get it Done
He points to the second one, about love, and says it's the company's No. 1 cultural value. We ask him what that means to him.
"It's the one that separates people from wanting to work here or not," he says. "It's our all-embracing inclusion, diversity, everything. We have such a diverse group from all over the world in many different places. This is the most important thing and in the environment outside the building -- like in our political environment, so divisive and full of problems to me -- we antidoted that with this."
That's the end of our interview. As we leave, I notice a framed copy of a "Magical Manifesto" tucked in the shelves behind Abovitz's shoulder. It reads, "Our shared vision is to make creative magic real."
Now that the Magic Leap One is finally out in the wild, we'll see.
CNET's Scott Stein and Ian Sherr contributed to this article.
First published Aug. 8 at 5:08 a.m. PT.
Update, 1:43 p.m. PT: Adds cities where the Magic Leap One is now available.
Correction, Aug. 9 at 7:39 a.m. PT: Fixes the first name of Tannen Campbell.


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If youre an adult that is young todays complex realm of love and relationships, things may sometimes feel pretty confusing and undefined. Had been yesterday simply a hookupor one thing more? Are we going outor just chilling out? Can it be time for the define the connection talk?
You might should ask yourself: have always been we dating, chilling out, or setting up? And just what do I really want?
Typically, whenever we speak about a few as dating, we most likely mean that theyre seeing each other frequently in a intimate method. These couples head out to venues together and think about one another as connected.
Nevertheless, its constantly a good clear idea to make your objectives clear along with your partner so no body gets blindsided ( this is when that comprise the connection talk will come in). Could you see other individuals too, or have you been exclusive? And do you know the you both thinking so far as the relationship that is physical your personal future?
In the past few years, older grownups and relationship professionals have actually expressed issues that old-fashioned relationship is collarspace reviews in decrease if not going extinct among university students and people that are young. But, research discovers that although the training may be a little less common, it will be nevertheless exists! And young adults nevertheless express lots of curiosity about finding a long-lasting partnermen much more therefore than females.
Conventional dating has its own good edges, for certain. Youll find out about your self as well as your partner, plus the relationship is going to be safer and much more satisfying than casual flings. But, often times, may very well not be prepared for the type of dedication that is included with much more serious dating relationships.
Chilling Out
Getting together in a sizable or group that is small and maybe even one on a single during the collection or someones apartment, are one method to be together without plenty of force. Because its clear of the theory that the specific situation is definitely a date that is actualwith possible expectation for dedication or sexual intercourse) it may be a great way to get acquainted with somebody.
Nonetheless, remember that individuals may work differently in teams than they might otherwise. Chilling out in teams may also often develop into partying and consuming, which could provide hazards that are real may not turn into you had been hoping. Additionally, going out may be confusingly nebulous from time to time. You may maybe not understand what youre going into, if such a thing.
Setting Up
Casual one-night hook-ups or buddies with advantages circumstances tend to be regarded as concerningly common amongst teenagers. Scientists concur that hook-ups (not at all times with sexual intercourse) are certainly notably typical in this age bracket, but in addition state that they havent increased considerably during the last few decades. Its additionally interesting to understand that many university students connect every six months or less, but assume their peers are doing much more frequently.
Scientists whom learn the hook-up occurrence realize that casual sex leads to quite mixed feelings. Thoughts cover anything from pleasure to regret to embarrassment, neutrality, or frustration, without any response that is single. Nevertheless, ladies have a tendency to feel more negative about hookups than guys do, and stands which are one-night intercourse with semi-strangers have a tendency to cause people to have the worst. Its also essential to learn that sexual satisfaction during hookups is significantly less than that experienced in committed relationships, particularly for ladies.
Unwelcome sex and intimate attack are additionally a lot more typical during hook-up circumstances. Plus in one research, over 25 % of pupils whod hooked up stated they hadnt actually supposed to, but had been intoxicated by drugs and alcohol at that time.
Amazingly, one research discovered that while under 5% of men and women expected a relationship that is serious develop from their hookups, 30-40% wished this one would. It certainly makes you wonderhow hook-ups that are many a desire to have one thing more?
The decision is Yours
Whatever choice you get making regarding the dating and social life at this age, allow it to be an educated one, centered on your own personal choices and desires. What exactly are you looking for– only at that right time, plus in the long term? Exactly what are your hopes and aspirations for romantic relationships? What type of relationship will make us feel loved, respected, and honored as an individual?
Don't forget to help keep dilemmas of safety and consent at heart, such as the part of liquor. If youre intimately active, make safe alternatives regarding contraception and sex that is safe.
This time around of life is romantically confusing, but additionally exciting. Enjoy fulfilling new individuals and discovering what realy works for you personally.
Searching for ways to link and acquire closer along with your partner? Need to know more about healthy relationships? The SMART partners task offers ELEVATE, a totally free, research-backed relationship improvement course for partners, in Florida counties throughout the state. All our programs are taught by trained experts and are also inviting to all the. Subscribe today!
By Carol Church, lead author, SMART Couples, Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, University of Florida