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Antony Flew's Change of Mind
Antony Flew, British philosopher, Oxford professor, and leading champion of atheism for more than fifty years, honestly followed the evidence and renounced his naturalistic faith in 2004.
The Sydney Anglicans website hosts this podcast audio discussing and reviewing Antony Flew's book:
• The Big Picture: There is a God – Antony Flew MP3 Audio here.
More Antony Flew posts here. William Lane Craig comments on Flew's change of mind here. Here is an exclusive interview (PDF) Antony Flew had with Gary Habermas. Video of Flew's discussion with Habermas and N.T. Wright and Habermas' debate with Flew can be found here.
Look for Apologetics315's review of Antony Flew's There is a God on Saturday.
11 Comments
Habermas also reviewed Flew's book at the EPS website
I think Flew also reviewed Dawkins' God Delusion in Philosophia Christi too.
Evidentialism scores another convert to deism!
Too bad the cosmological argument is not the gospel.
Ex N1hilo,
FWIW, it was not the cosmological arugment that convinced Flew (if I remember correctly he still doesn't find that particular argument convincing), rather it was the teleological argument that convinced him.
It's true that, as you say, the cosmological argument is not the gospel. But it sounds like you're insinuating that because the cosmological argument is not the gospel, that it is worthless. (Forgive me if that was not your intent, that's how it seems.)
Well, I should point out that your post on this blog is not the gospel either. Does that mean your post here is worthless? No, it just means that these things are what they are, and not what they are not intended to be.
Before I was a Christian, the cosmological argument was the only reason I believed God existed. Of course, now I believe for different/additional reasons. But it was a step along the path so to speak for me, as I hope it is for others.
I agree that things like the teleological and cosmological argument can be useful stepping stones in acceptance of the Gospel but I think that Ex N1hilo has a valid point that Flew is not a convert, he is simply an intellectual who changed his mind but we often celebrate it as if he is a convert.
I do not believe that rational arguments for the existence of God are useless, nor that arguments based on empirical evidences are useless. But they are commonly misused. They are treated as necessary pre-requisites before one can even think about presenting the law of God and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to unbelievers. Some even teach explicitly, "You must convince unbelievers of the existence of God before you give can them the gospel."
As you have said, the words I posted previously are not the gospel. But then, I am not presenting them as the gospel. Nor am I presenting them as something that must be established in our dialogs with unbelievers before we can give them the gospel. The standard philosophical and evidential proofs for God's existence are presented as the latter by a number of prominent apologists.
A good example is R. C. Sproul, who, in a recent series on apologetics, stated, "I've always taken the position that the starting point of Christian apologetics is the demonstration of the existence of God. If you can get that established at the beginning, the rest is easy. And the approach that I take for establishing the existence of God, as we will see in this course, is basically through rational argumentation."
How can the gospel of Jesus Christ – his sinless life and atoning death, his resurrection and his deliverance of sinners from the wrath of God – be relegated to the status of "the rest" which is "easy" only if one has first used an Aristotelian argument to establish the likelihood that a deity exists?
Likewise, J.P. Moreland has said that you cannot appeal to scripture in a discussion with an unbeliever, since he does not accept it as authoritative. Dinesh D'Sousa has stated that arguments based on the bible have no effect on unbelievers since they do not accept the bible's authority.
These gentlemen speak as though they are unfamiliar with Isaiah 55:11. God promises there that His word will not return to Him void. It will accomplish His purpose. At the forefront of our efforts to present and defend the faith must be the authoritative message of scripture, as it was in the preaching of the apostles.
Apologetics isnt a "one size fits all" enterprise. Anyone who uses it regularly knows that. The presupositional dogma isnt helpful either.I think J.P. Moreland and R.C. Sproul are fine examples of God honoring apologetics and have more than enough fruit to show for it.
Why are these men spending so much time and effort trying to convince people of something they already know? This is a waste of the precious but short time God has given us. Romans chapter one declares that all men know God as Creator and as Judge. That's given. We don't need to demonstrate it. God has already made Himself known to them. Now, we declare His message to them.
The scripture is the sword of God. He has placed it in our hands. We should not waste time arguing with unbelievers about the existence of the sword-maker, or the whether the sword is really sharp, or just a play-sword. Instead, use the sword. CUT THEM. Let them know its power. It WILL have the effect that God has ordained for it. Guaranteed.
Present the fine tuning of the universe as something for which we praise and worship and stand in awe of God, not as a criterion people should consider as they stand in judgment of God, determining for themselves whether the Creator exists or not.
To present it as such is to pander to man's self-deceived, egotistical view of himself as the arbiter of truth. It will produce lots of converts – to deism. Instead, let's give them the truth as presented authoritatively in scripture, and command them to believe and repent.
Look, I'm not saying that evidentialists do not present the law and the gospel. Most do. Thank God they do. But only after they have spent much time and effort shoring up the unbeliever's false opinion of himself as God's judge.
I have tired to be clear because I think this is an important issue. Perhaps an illustration will help express my meaning:
If the presentation and defense of the faith were a meal, creation and the law of God would be the appetizers, the gospel the main course, and things like rational proofs and evidences from nature would be the sweet and fluffy desserts. All laid out before a hungry world and offered freely.
By contrast, evidentialism makes rational proofs and scientific evidences the ticket that must be purchased and punched before one may be admitted to the banquet.
Ex N1hilo,
I'm sure you mean well, but this kind of dogmatism over presupositional methods seems unnecessary. I also value that method. It can be very powerful. A great tool, but not THE ONLY tool.
You seem to assume other methods only result in deist converts. That is clearly false. If we observe testimonies of converts who were persuaded by other methods besides yours, what would you conclude? I would conclude that God can use other ways too.
I doubt that people like J.P. Moreland and R.C. Sproul would REQUIRE that a non-beliver first have their "rational proofs and scientific evidences" tickets "purchased and punched" before ever giving them the Gospel.
To say that appealing to other methods "shores up the unbeliever's false opinion of himself as God's judge" is obviously not what is intended by those methods. Nor is it "pandering". What IS intended, is to take the skeptics doubts and questions seriously, not brush them off because they don't fit into the presupositional template for apologetics and evangelism. I am happy to use pre-sup. arguments, but if they fail, and they sometimes do, then why not try another approach? Especially if it will bring someone closer to considering the Gospel.
God has used and is using other apologetic methods to bring people to himself. I would think this is something you could rejoice in. I know I do.
Please understand that my point in making these criticisms is to sharpen iron. If I come on a little strong, it is because I see the way we approach unbelievers, to present and defend the truths of Christ, as a vitally important topic.
I do not reject everything in the evidentialist or "classical apologetics" approaches. Nor do I accept everything that goes under the label of presupposionalism. There are valid criticisms that can and should be brought against each of the standard approaches to apologetics.
And I understand that what Sproul, Moreland and others are trying to do is to promote and to honor Jesus Christ, and to expand His kingdom. Nonetheless, I bring what I believe to be valid and important criticisms.
I have held these concerns for a good while, but was never vocal about them until I heard a lecture by J. P. Moreland, a few weeks ago. (Apologetics315 has an entry on it here: https://apologetics315.com/2009/12/reconciling-science-scripture-mp3-audio.html.) I was excited to find it, since it deals with science and the scriptures – one of my favorite topics. But what I found in Dr. Moreland's presentation alarmed and dismayed me. I believe that it illustrates clearly some of the serious flaws that plague current popular apologetics.
The presentation is about an hour and a half long. It consists mostly of evidences from the sciences and arguments from philosophy that are presented as supporting the Christian world view. A full hour goes by before Moreland addresses a single passage from the bible. And then, it is to declare that he has no idea what Genesis 1 to 3 means. Because no one can know what it means. The only thing we can be certain of is that those who think the days of Genesis 1 are 24-hour days are "out of their stinking minds. They're crazy."
Dr. Moreland makes a lot of Antony Flew's change of mind. It is because of these sorts of arguments, according to Moreland, that Flew is now very close to being a Christian. Maybe the almost-Christian section of hell is less hot than the rest, I don't know. But I do know that no presentation of the teleological arguement has ever brought anyone to faith in Christ. I'm not saying that it and similar arguments have no usefulness at all. I am saying they are over-emphasized. We expect too much from them.
We ought not to attempt to validate the scriptures by appeal to current scientific theory. That's backwards. We need to test the validity of scientific theories by the scriptures.
And we must present the law and the gospel as Jesus and the apostles did. They did not hang the validity of their teachings on an appeal to big bang cosmology, but on the authority of God's word.
They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.
To some degee, the above debate, strikes me as a faulty dilemma; see Jesus teaching in Matthew 22:15-22, for example.
Here Jesus exposes the motives of the Phairsees as expressed in the question they ask him about 'paying taxes to Ceasar.'
Their motive in posing the faulty dilemma, was to trap Jesus into answering in a way that would either (1) alienate the
masses from him (pay taxes) or identify him as a force opposed to the authority of the civil administration (don't pay them)
He answers in a way that exposes this motive, and this confounds His questioners. His response falls squarely between these
two false alternatives.
The cumulative apologetic method recognizes that the Holy Sprit witnesses to the individual with regard to their personal salvation (Rom 8:16; 1 John 3:24, 4:13). While apologetics saves no one, this is not because there is no proof for the Christian faith, but rather because the lost soul cannot respond to the evidence. The action of the Holy Spirit in giving faith is not apart from the evidence, but along with evidence; and in the first instance consists in preparing the soul for reception of the evidence. Apologetics does not make men and women Christian, but apologetics supplies the systematically organized basis on which faith must rest. The relationship, then, between rational evidence as expressed in a cumulative method, on the one side, and the Holy Spirit on the other is complementary. It is not either the Holy Spirit or the evidence. It is the Holy Spirit working in and through the evidence to convince people of the truth and, therefore, convict them of the relevance, of the Christian faith.
There is both an outer objective dimension (Jude 3; fides quae creditur – the content of faith as revealed by God) and an inner subjective dimension (Eph 2:8-10; fides qua creditur – the faith of the believer that receives and holds the revelation of God) to the process by which one comes to know that Christianity is true. In addition, as one matures spiritually in that Christian faith, one progressively recognizes the interrelationship between these two dimensions.
We agree that it is the Holy Spirit that gives men faith. I think most christian apologists would agree as well. But, we must remember, the means He has chosen to work through in bringing about saving faith in the hearts of sinners is the preaching of the word of God, and particularly the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is found only in the special revelation of God. Natural or general revelation can and does give us knowledge of God — as Creator and Judge. But not as Savior. The gospel is not contained in general revelation. It is not even hinted at. Therefore, approaches based on natural theology are of limited usefulness in apologetics. They have some usefulness in reminding us of what we suppress in our unrighteousness; that is, we already know God as our Maker and we fear Him as our judge. (Romans 1) In this, natural revelation affirms what the bible says on these matters. It shows that the unbeliever already knows that what the bible declares on these matters is true.
But if apologetics involves giving the unbeliever the reason (singular) for the hope that is within us, we can only do so by telling them about Jesus. His gospel is the reason for our hope. Our hope is not in a chain of events leading back to God as first cause. It is not in the fine tuning of the laws and constants of physics, nor in the fact that all human beings have a conscience. Hope is found only in the substitionary death of Christ and his victory over sin, death, and hell.
Evidentialists preach the gospel. Of course they do. I have not suggested that they don't. My point is that they tend to over-emphasize the role of natural theology in their presentation. (And some of them conflate current scientific theory and natural revelation. These are not the same thing.) Often they give "the evidence" primacy, when the word of God ought to have the primacy. Evidences from nature and from philosophy cannot serve as the basis of our faith. Our faith is based on the testimony of God about historical events that have happened, and which are recorded in the scriptures.
1 Peter 3:18 (ESV) For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,


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Published 5:55 am, Saturday, March 9, 2013
QUESTION: What is the difference between a recommended selling price and an appraisal?
ANSWER: Any real estate agent can recommend a fair selling price for your home. This, however, is not an official appraisal conducted by a qualified appraiser. When should you get an appraisal?
One reason would be a conflict over tax assessment. Appraisals are almost a must to support such a claim.
Another reason would be if the government plans to take your property by eminent domain.
You stand a better chance in court with an official appraisal in hand if you are disputing the fair market price.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
10 Tanker Air Carrier
3201 University Blvd SE, Suite 102
Albuquerque, NM 87106
Email: email@example.com
Phone: (760) 246-8288
Fax: (760) 246-8118
For correspondence and testimonials from individuals impacted by The 10, visit our Facebook page at: facebook.com/10Tanker
Whats new at 10 Tanker
10 Tanker Names New President
This week 10 Tanker Air Carrier named John Gould, the company's Business Development Manager, as their President effective the fifth of June. Mr. Gould has been with 10 Tanker since 2013, after a successful 37 year wildland fire career with the Department of Interior. Mr. Gould will succeed Rick Hatton, who has been the President and CEO of 10 Tanker since founding the company in 2002. Mr. Hatton will continue his association with the company assisting with this transition and continuing to advise on the future success of the company.


text: From: "Stanislav O\. Bezzubtsev" <firstname.lastname@example.com>Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:22:55 +0300> Set second bit of randomly generated mac. That marks MAC> as locally assigned. IEEE802.3, section one, 3.2.3.> > Signed-off-by: Stanislav O. Bezzubtsev <firstname.lastname@example.com>Do you know why this driver even has this bug?It's because it does not use random_ether_addr() and tries todo it by hand all by itself.Please fix this bug for real by having the driver use the properinterface to calculate a randomized ethernet address.Thank you.


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Previous Page —Page One
"It's important for people our age to see that he wasn't this saint-like figure," she said. "It's making you see that just because you're not perfect, it doesn't mean you can't do good."
For M.E. Ward, seeing an in-the-flesh incarnation of King brought her back more than 40 years, to when she watched his soaring speeches on the television. No matter how human he seemed on stage, she said, he still carried a godly gift.
"Still charismatic, still an orator, and an individual who was able to move people through his speech," she said, adding that King enlightened the world with a message "to be peaceful, to be patient, to be non-violent."
No matter how distant his presence is now, that legacy is still very relevant, she said, in what she called "a world of turmoil and violence, constant violence."
Do people idealize him too much?
"They don't do it enough!" said 64-year-old Elisabeth Carr, who cried through most of the play, feeling some of the pain she felt when the civil rights leader died. "The younger generation, they don't know anymore. … They don't understand what they went through."
After traveling more than five hours with three friends — all of them African-American — to see Saturday's matinee, Mariko Tapper Taylor said seeing King in all his flaws did nothing to diminish his legacy.
"It's better to remember him as human," she said. "Who's flawless? It just shows that there's another side of him."
For her, the holiday remains very personal, Taylor said.
One of her friends, Dr. Donnita Scott, chimed in:
"If it wasn't for him we probably wouldn't be doctors," she said, nodding at the group, which includes two ER physicians and a psychiatrist.
Dr. Jan Thomas agreed:
"We're standing on that mountaintop."


text: Ameritech rating lowered: Ameritech Corp.'s ratings for its $2.2 billion in long-term debt and preferred stock were lowered one notch by Moody's Investors Service amid concern that Ameritech's recent acquisitions may slow its earnings growth. Moody's said it cut Ameritech's ratings to "Aa3" from "Aa2," concluding a review it began on Oct. 27. A reduced bond rating may cause a company's borrowing costs to rise. The highest Moody's rating is "Aaa." In the past few months, Ameritech agreed to three acquisitions in an effort to seek out new sources of revenue as it faces competition in the U.S. phone industry.


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Summer school: 5 simple cooking tricks to master
By Carolyn Malcoun, June 9, 2010 - 11:03am
Summer is a great time of year to learn a few new tricks in the kitchen. It's warm enough to grill, and there are so many fruits and vegetables—even fish—that are in season right now. Learn the 10 Secrets to Healthy Summer Cooking here.
As a food editor and recipe developer at EatingWell Magazine, I know that once you master a few tricks, cooking is even more fun and delectable. So why not resolve to expand your cooking repertoire and learn some new recipes this summer? I challenge you to cook these 5 recipes this summer.
Why these 5 recipes? They use techniques that you might think are fussy and difficult but really aren't, or are recipes you should know how to make to enjoy summer's best foods.
Cooking Trick #1: Perfectly grill a salmon fillet.
Recipe: Grilled Salmon with Tomatoes & Basil (recipe follows)
Grilling fish can be tricky. Make it foolproof by using a sheet of foil to keep the fish juicy while cooking and eliminate the need to flip. This recipe is a simple way to get more fish in your diet. Fatty fish like salmon are rich in omega-3 fats, which support heart health and may help to prevent skin cancer by reducing inflammatory compounds that can promote tumor growth.
Cooking Trick #2: Make an amazing summer fruit pie.
Recipe: Peach-Raspberry Pie
Really, who can resist a pie? Especially when heady peaches and sweet berries are at their best! I know I was nervous to roll out pie dough until I went to culinary school and learned how to do it correctly, so I can totally relate if you're nervous too! But it's really not that hard once you get the hang of it. My husband even managed to make an amazing pie without my supervision (which is a big deal for him). When you're ready to tackle your first pie here are recipes for peach-raspberry pie, apple-blackberry pie and more, plus step-by-step photos to guide you through the process of making flaky, tender pie crust.
Cooking Trick #3: Mix up a signature mocktail or cocktail.
Recipe: Fresh Grape Soda
We entertain more frequently when the temperature rises. One of my favorite things about summer parties is fun, fruity drinks. Added bonus: if you make them with fresh fruits and vegetables, your drinks will be full of antioxidants that keep you healthy. I like to make Fresh Grape Soda, particularly if I'm entertaining a crowd of varying ages, because kids love that I'm making "pop" with real fruit—and adults love it with a little vodka stirred in.
Cooking Trick #4: Cook a potluck dish everyone will want the recipe for.
Recipe: Zucchini Rice Casserole
We inevitably have a couple of different potlucks to go to every month in the summer. Zucchini Rice Casserole is always a crowd pleaser—it's full of savory bits of sausage and zucchini all mixed up into creamy, cheesy rice.
Cooking Trick #5: Pull together a fast no-cook dinner.
Recipe: Chopped Greek Salad with Chicken
Hey, even if it's too hot to cook, you still need to eat! And while PB&J is easy to whip up, why not make something a little more nutritious and satisfying? Chopped Greek Salad with Chicken takes advantage of the summer-fresh vegetables that are falling over themselves to be part of your meals at this time of year.
Grilled Salmon with Tomatoes & Basil
Makes: 4 servings
Active time: 30 minutes | Total: 30 minutes
This recipe is so beautiful and yet so simple to prepare—it's perfect for entertaining. You just spread a side of salmon with minced garlic, sprinkle with fresh basil, then layer sliced tomatoes on top. Put it on the grill for 10 minutes and you're done! Shopping Tip: Wild-caught salmon from the Pacific (Alaska and Washington) are more sustainably fished and have a larger, more stable population. For more information, visit Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, seafoodwatch.org.
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 whole wild salmon fillet (also called a "side of salmon," about 1 1/2 pounds; see Shopping Tip, above)
1/3 cup plus 1/4 cup thinly sliced fresh basil, divided
2 medium tomatoes, thinly sliced
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1. Preheat grill to medium.
2. Mash minced garlic and 3/4 teaspoon salt on a cutting board with the side of a chef's knife or a spoon until a paste forms. Transfer to a small bowl and stir in oil.
3. Check the salmon for pin bones and remove if necessary (see Tip, below). Measure out a piece of heavy-duty foil (or use a double layer of regular foil) large enough for the salmon fillet. Coat the foil with cooking spray. Place the salmon skin-side down on the foil and spread the garlic mixture all over it. Sprinkle with 1/3 cup basil. Overlap tomato slices on top and sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and pepper.
4. Transfer the salmon on the foil to the grill. Grill until the fish flakes easily, 10 to 12 minutes. Use two large spatulas to slide the salmon from the foil to a serving platter. Serve the salmon sprinkled with the remaining 1/4 cup basil.
Per serving: 248 calories; 10 g fat (2 g sat, 5 g mono); 80 mg cholesterol; 3 g carbohydrate; 0 g added sugars; 35 g protein; 1 g fiber; 367 mg sodium; 799 mg potassium. Nutrition bonus: Potassium (23% daily value), Vitamin A (22% dv), Vitamin C (18% dv), Magnesium (15% dv).
Tip: Depending on how your side of salmon was prepared at the market, small white pin bones may still be in the fillet. We suggest removing them before you cook the fish. To remove the bones, place your hand underneath the fillet to bend it up slightly, exposing the row of bones running down the length—they will poke out of the flesh and point at an angle toward the wider end of the fillet. Grasp each bone with a clean pair of tweezers or needle-nose pliers and gently pull it out in the direction of the wide end of the fillet.
What recipe would you like to learn to make this summer? Tell us what you think below.
TAGS: Carolyn Malcoun, Food Blog, Dessert, Dinner, Entertaining
A graduate of New England Culinary Institute and University of Wisconsin with a degree in journalism, Carolyn pairs her long-standing love for food with writing as EatingWell's senior food editor. Carolyn's culinary interest is rooted in her childhood; she grew up making thousands of Christmas cookies every year with her mom and picking leaves off bunches of parsley to make tabbouleh with her dad. Away from the kitchen, Carolyn enjoys seeking out rare craft beers and exploring the outdoors with her husband, young daughter and dog.
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No Time
I reported back on 17th July, that I no longer intended to purchase the Sunday Times. To save you flipping back to find out why, it was because they thought it was acceptable to expose Nightjack, something I had fundamental objections to some of which not even to do with the fact that I am, or rather was,Ă'Â a police blogger.
Almost a month later I'm happy to report that the folk who run the newspaper haven't had a single penny from my hard earned wages, nor will they in future.
There are so many things in life we can't do anything about & a whole bunch of other stuff we probably can do something about but choose not to. I like to think if someome has pissed me off to such a degree that it's worth doing something about it, then whatever I can do, however small, is probably worth it.
I don't suppose my Ă'ÂŁ100 a year for a copy of the Sunday times, means a great deal to the publishers in the great scheme of things. But, with any luck & a following wind, I'm planning on being around for another 40 years or so. Ă'ÂŁ4,000 is an extra lovely little holiday in Europe I can have, courtesy of the Sunday Times.


text:
Back Of Boogaloo Beatles
[F]Back off, Boogaloo, I said, back off, Boogaloo, come on, [Bb]back of Bogaloo, [F]boo
[F]Back off, Boogaloo, what d'yer think you're gonna do I got a [Bb]flash right from the [F]start
[Bb]Get yourself together now and give me something tasty
Ev'rything you try to do you [Ab]know it suremsounds [C]wasted
[F]Back off, Boogaloo, I said, back off Boogaloo, you think you're a groove
Standing there in your wallpaper shoes and your [Bb]socks that match your [F]eyes
[F]Back off, Boogaloo, I said, back off Boogaloo, come on, [Bb]back off [F]Boogaloo
Ab - xx6544
Bb - xx3331
C - x32010
F - xx3211
Important: The song above is NOT stored on the Chordie server. The original song is hosted at www.guitaretab.com. Chordie works as a search engine and provides on-the-fly formatting. Chordie does not index songs against artists'/composers' will. To remove this song please click here.
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text:
|Main Archive Page > Month Archives > spamassassin-dev archives
--- Comment #5 from Karsten Bräckelmann <firstname.lastname@example.com> 2011-11-05 22:41:16 UTC ---
FWIW, some CLI magic reveals at least one documentation issue fixed in patch
attachment 4862.
- -r pidfile, --pidfile Write the process id to pidfile
+ -r file, --pidfile=file Write the process id to pidfile
The long option is missing the argument. Though the patch also missed to adjust
the description and use 'file' instead of 'pidfile'.
The second patch is just too scary to review without spending quite some time
manually verifying. And it borks the shebang in line 1.
-- Configure bugmail: https://issues.apache.org/SpamAssassin/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are the assignee for the bug.


text:
PPPs proposed constitutional package may save Musharraf from impeachmentMay 21st, 2008 - 3:12 pm ICT by admin
Islamabad, May 21 (ANI): Sources in Pakistans Law Ministry have reportedly disclosed that in order to ensure that President Pervez Musharraf is not impeached and steps down at his own will in the future, the PPP-led government is all set to ratify his Nov 3 actions, and also indemnify the steps taken by him in the first PCO which were rejected by the MMA during negotiations on the 17th constitutional amendment.
Even the steps taken by Musharraf in the first PCO, which were rejected by the MMA during negotiations on the 17th amendment, would also be indemnified, The News quoted the sources as saying.
Though, this was neither confirmed nor denied by the countrys Law Minister Farooq H Naek. Wait and see. Everything is open as of today, he said when asked about the indemnity to actions of Nov 3 through the upcoming constitutional package.
Meanwhile, a senior official of the Law Ministry confirmed that the judges who took oath under the PCO on and after Nov 3 would be adjusted in one way or the other. Apart from indemnifying the Nov 3 actions, all those government officials who presented themselves as witnesses in the Supreme Court against the then non-functional chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry would stay at their key positions, said the sources.
There would be many restrictions on the deposed judges after their reinstatement, as they would come back completely in accordance with the wishes of the presidency, the official said, and added: The package will first be approved by the top legal aides of Musharraf before being presented in the PPP CEC and to PPPis coalition partners.
According to legal and constitutional experts, there were three main steps taken under Nov 3 unconstitutional move of the then chief of the Army staff. The first was the removal of independent judges. The second was installing his own handpicked judges and the third was indemnifying the controversial and illegal National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO).
The present moves of the PPP-led government to restore the judges in accordance with the aspirations of President Musharraf, the continuation of the PCO judges and the validation of other major and key steps means indemnification to Nov 3 actions, sources said. (ANI)
Tags: 17th amendment, army staff, cec, chief justice iftikhar muhammad chaudhry, coalition partners, constitutional amendment, constitutional experts, constitutional package, farooq, impeachment, independent judges, justice iftikhar muhammad chaudhry, law minister, law ministry, legal aides, mma, pco, pervez musharraf, president pervez musharraf, reinstatement


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German President Joachim Gauck views an art installation in Berlin on Friday of a simulation of what it might be like if the Nazi Gestapo were to ransack a bedroom today. The exhibition has been put together by the anti-xenophobia organization Gesicht Zeigen, or, "show your face." The president visited the exhibition on the anniversary of the Nov. 9, 1938 Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, Nazi attacks against Jews. The show is aimed at providing youth with a view of the horrors of the Nazi regime.
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text:
Kiley Borowicz (44) of Roseau was defended by Bailey Mudek (13) of Esko in the first half. ] CARLOS GONZALEZ email@example.com, March 18, 2015, Minneapolis, Minn., 2015, Mariucci Arena, High School / Prep Girls Basketball, Class 2A quarter
1. Almost all-new matchup
No. 1 seed and top-ranked Plainview-Elgin-Millville (28-1) is making its first state tournament appearance under this name. Elgin-Millville made six previous trips and won the Class 1A championship in 2005. Senior guards Sarah Hart, who has signed with Division I St. Bonaventure, and Tessa Hubbard (Wisconsin-River Falls) lead a deep Bulldogs team. Meanwhile, Holy Family is making its tournament debut. The Fire (18-11) went undefeated against Class 2A competition.
2. All in the family
No team fills the basket like Roseau, the highest-scoring team in Class 2A (81.6 points per game). Leading the charge is junior guard Kiley Borowicz (26.4 points per game) and her younger sister Kacie (16.6), a freshman guard. Kiley went over 2,000 career points earlier this season. Four days later, Kacie scored her 1,000th. Katie Borowicz, a seventh-grader, chips in with an average of 4.9 points per game. The Rams generate steals from their press, score in transition and move the ball well.
3. Coaching comparisons
Minnehaha Academy coach Josh Thurow, who reached his ninth state tournament in 12 years, recently earned career victory No. 250. His counterpart in the quarterfinals, New London-Spicer coach Mike Dreier, is the career leader in coaching victories in Minnesota girls' basketball. He built a record of 863-159 in 38 years, all at New London-Spicer. This is Dreier's 16th trip to state. The Wildcats won Class 2A championships in 1997 and 2002.


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Spontaneous Drama:Improv and Communities
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text: Microsoft not only unveiled a slew of new Windows Phone 7 handsets on Monday, but it also showcased the first WP 7 commercial. All in all, it's pretty funny and enjoyable. But as Gruber points out, people aren't tethered to their iPhones because of frustrating and difficult to navigate UIs, but rather because they enjoy them and can't get enough of them. The tagline for the commercial is, "It's time for a phone to save us from our phones" – the problem is that no one with an iPhone, or even an Android device, wants to be saved.


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MA Home to Highest Percentage of High Tech Jobs in U.S.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
The 2012 State New Economy Index, penned by Robert D. Atkinson and Luke A. Stewart, showcases the regions that are at the forefront of the nation's movement toward a global, innovation-based New Economy. The index, produced by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), ranks states on a series of indicators that analyze the environment for innovation and high-tech job growth.
A Culture of Innovation
Massachusetts topped the index again in 2012 as it did in the 1999, 2002, 2007, 2008 and 2010 editions, in part due to the fact that 7.8 percent of the state's total jobs are in high-tech industries. A high concentration of software and hardware companies, a booming biotechnology industry and a number of top-notch research universities all add to the Bay State's strengths when it comes to meeting the needs of the New Economy.
The Commonwealth was also notable for having the 3rd highest percentage of jobs held by scientists and engineers (5.4%), the highest innovation capacity, the 2nd best broadband in the nation and the 5th most patents per 1,000 working-age residents.
Delaware, Washington, California and Maryland rounded out the top five in the 2012 index. Elsewhere in New England, Connecticut ranked 9th, New Hampshire was 12th, Vermont came in 15th, Rhode Island was 23rd, and Maine was the lowest ranked in the region at 27th.
"More than three years on from the end of the Great Recession, only six states have regained employment levels enjoyed prior to the recession and 17 states are still more than 5 percent below their pre-recession employment levels," said Stewart an economic analyst at ITIF and co-author of the Index.
"In addition, U.S. manufacturing employment has declined 33 percent between 2000 and 2011, exceeding the losses of the Great Depression. Much of this decline can be attributed to declining U.S. competitiveness resulting from our failure to adapt to the demands of the globalized New Economy."
More Work on "Win-Win" Scenarios Needed
To address these impacts and enhance economic transformation, the authors argued that state strategies should focus on establishing policies that reduce within-state zero-sum competition, spur "win-win" economic results that benefit the local and national economy, and enhance state-federal innovation-based economic development partnerships.
"In today's highly competitive environment states must work together and with the federal government to overhaul their economic development policies," said Atkinson, president of ITIF and co-author of the Index.
"Too often, states still view their economic competitors as next door, rather than halfway around the world. If, instead, they used incentives to expand broadband, support entrepreneurial assistance programs, or invest in research and technology transfer, they – and the nation as a whole – would be far more globally competitive."
The State New Economy Index uses 26 indicators in five categories to assess states' fundamental capacity to transform their economies and incubate innovation. The categories are: knowledge jobs, globalization, economic dynamism, the digital economy and innovation capacity.
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Posts Tagged: Padma Viswanathan
The Ever After of Ashwin Rao by Padma Viswanathan
Next Letter in the Mail: Padma Viswanathan
We're getting ready to send out our next Letter in the Mail, and it's from writer Padma Viswanathan! In her letter, Padma writes about her aim as a writer and why writers write, empathy and compassion, and whether literature has the ability to make people better....more
The Rumpus Interview with Ania Szado
The Rumpus Interview with Catherine Bush
The Rumpus Interview with Jennifer Cody Epstein
The Rumpus Interview with Kristín Ómarsdóttir
Reading in the New Year
Welcome to 2011! What do we call this decade, anyway? Who will win the Super Bowl? What will become of health care reform? How many New York City snowplows does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Some questions are impossible to answer....more
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Rumpus Interview With Rebecca Solnit
We Are Each Other's Spiders
The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks
It's a tricky thing, a memoir of a death: you know how it's going to end. The challenge for the writer (not only with regard to the conclusion) is making the inevitable unknown....more
The Toss of a Lemon
From the Washington Post: "While The Toss of a Lemon, has at its heart a 10-year-old Brahmin girl who marries an ill-fated man, its ambitions transcend culture and country to reach for the nature of fate itself." …read more...more
Rumpus Original – The Best of NOT 2008
We asked for the best books people read this year NOT published in 2008. We did this because even writers rarely read more than a handful of books actually published that year. Usually the best books are recommended from people we trust, and that can take a while....more


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The Phi Delta Gamma Graduate Scholarship
Deadline: 18 April 2018 12:00 PM (NOON) EST
(All awards have been made for the 2017-18 academic year. Thank you for your interest in this opportunity.)
Phi Delta Gamma, a national graduate fraternity founded in 1922, actively supports graduate education in all fields of study. Members have earned or are pursuing advanced degrees and represent high standards in scholarship, professionalism, and service. Phi Delta Gamma is a unique interdisciplinary organization, committed to the advancement of graduate education. It provides:
The Beta Chapter of Phi Delta Gamma provides an annual award, known as the Phi Delta Gamma Scholarship, to a graduate student who is a candidate for an advanced degree in any school of the George Washington University and who shows scholarship, financial need, and promise.
Although scholarship recipients are determined by the end of the Spring Semester, scholarship monies are only available for the following Fall Semester. Scholarships are awarded for GW tuition purposes. No cash grants are given. Awards vary from $500 - $2,000.
The applicant must be studying at the Foggy Bottom campus and have completed at least nine (9) semester hours of graduate work in their program at the George Washington University by January of the academic year in which the application is made. Students working in a benefited position at GW are not eligible. Students studying in the Executive Education program are also not eligible.
All application materials must be submitted via the online fellowships application portal by the deadline, this includes recommendation letters. Applications submitted after the deadline will not be considered (including recommendation letters). Instructions on how to apply through the portal can be found here.


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Artek tearoom
Interior and concept design, 2015
Habitare Furniture Fair 2015, Helsinki, Finland. Design by Hanna-Kaarina Heikkilä and Anni Pitkäjärvi
Photos: Aino Huovio
©hanna-kaarina heikkilä
Artek tearoom
Artek tearoom is a modern and Scandinavian interpretation of the traditional tearooms. It takes its inspiration from minimalist Japanese teahouses which traditional elements have been modernized to 21st century.


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As we look back on the past year, we also look back at one of the most popular, and yet most divisive, posts in our history. Here, we present one of those articles…
Over the past few days, I've had the unique experience of watching "Home Alone" and "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" many times over. AMC has shown them ad nauseum, over and over again to the point that I have them pretty much memorized. Seeing them so often back-to-back, I've realized a thing or two – and now I have many issues that are necessary to point out to create a deconstruction of the "Home Alone" universe:
Let's get out of the way that there are, in fact, three "Home Alone" films…that take place after "Lost in New York"! Needless to say, I won't be discussing any of them – but it's interesting, and sad, to note that there are five films (and counting) in the franchise. For the purpose of this article, I will be bouncing back-and-forth between the two Macaulay Culkin-era films, so please try and keep up.
First and foremost, nearly every adult in these films is, without hyperbole, a truly awful human being. Not just the Wet/Sticky Bandits, but everyone else – from the clerks in every store Kevin goes to (who go out of their way to not just question this child, but believe his preposterous stories), the Santa Claus he visits (who isn't at all concerned that this kid is by himself after Kevin TELLS HIM he doesn't have his family anymore), police officers (in both Chicago and New York), EVERYONE who works for the Federal Aviation Administration (more on this later), the entire staff of the, at the time, 5-star Plaza Hotel (we'll get to them too), and, of course, Kevin's parents. The only adult who isn't truly terrible at everything they do is the homeless pigeon lady – she can at least control the behavior of wild animals.
Yes, even Old Man Marley is terrible. I know he rescues Kevin (how he comes to learn of what happens is never explained) – but, after the scene when he rescues Kevin from potential CHILD MURDERERS he just lets him go home to his empty house, never informing the police as to the truth about what happened, nor that this 8 year old child is without proper adult care. At the very least, now that Kevin knows you're not a creepy killer, can't you let him stay at your house until you can get in touch with his family?
Now, you may be saying that at least his parents are good people because of their concern for Kevin, although just not the brightest people as they've lost him two consecutive years in a row. Are they though? Let's address the first thing that we learn about them – that they've raised an entire family of absolute dickheads. The opening sequence in the first film shows that they have five children and every single one of them is awful and selfish. And his father, Peter, is the least capable father ever who doesn't punish his children for anything and gives them literally whatever they want. Although, he does finally get mad about something – at the end of the second movie when he finds out that Kevin used his credit card to spend $967 on room service. He finds this out in his COMPED ROOM at the Plaza Hotel, where there's a GIANT tree with FREE toys for his whole family (and his brother's) that he didn't have to spend one friggin' dime on. All thanks to Kevin – the same Kevin who, if he didn't use the credit card to spend $967 on room service, you never would have found him!
So let's go to his mom – Kate – who will stop at nothing to reunite with and get her child home safe. She's clearly the head of this household. This household that is ENTIRELY too lenient and forgiving with Buzz for causing a scene at the Christmas Pageant and ENTIRELY too hard on Kevin for sticking up for himself. It's not his fault that that fat bastard Buzz created a perfect domino effect and knocked down every child in the choir. And what in the Christ is Buzz even doing in that choir?!? He's far too old to be in the same children's choir as Kevin. Nor would he even have the same vocal range as Kevin, so he shouldn't even be in the same grouping.
The Plaza Hotel Staff – holy lord, where do we begin? How about with the fact that Kevin is able to make a reservation through the phone using the "slow" function on his TalkBoy WITHOUT GIVING A DATE OF ARRIVAL?!? How about the scene where they confront Kevin and he uses the movie dialogue to pretend he fires a gun at them in the hotel and no one ever JUST CALLS THE POLICE – even the guests in adjacent rooms who hear all the "gunfire" commotion and do the sensible thing – stick their heads out the doors.
Airline personnel – it's hard to believe it now, but apparently in both 1990 and 1992 it was very easy to get on board a flight where you can pick any seat you want. It was also very easy to get on board a flight to one city with a ticket to ANOTHER CITY!
Speaking of flights, let's go back to Kevin's mom (who also doesn't check on her kids once on the airborne flight to Florida). Since she's clearly in charge of the family, why doesn't she finally say to her husband what the whole planet is thinking: "why the fuck are we paying for Uncle Frank and his awful family's vacation? Seriously, do we actually enjoy spending time with them?!?" For one, if that's the entirety of the gift giving for the family, that's fine, although no child in their right mind in 1992 would be happy with a non-Disney World Florida-destination vacation, unless they were also getting a Super Nintendo (on another note, why doesn't Kevin or any of his siblings play video games?).
When they get to Florida – oh noes, it's raining! But they get the call that Kevin's in New York. So, naturally, they all go to New York. And, for some reason, Frank and his family too. Why? Frank has contributed exactly nothing to the search for Kevin and, more importantly, his vacation to Florida has return flights for him back home – why on Earth do they also get to go to New York? "Hey Frank, just because it's raining at this same hotel where you randomly spent your honeymoon (weird), why don't you just stay here because I don't see why I should pay for your flight to New York too?"
My final issue with these films is Fuller. Kevin is kicked out of his room (for who?) in the first movie and has to share a bed with Fuller – a known bedwetter. WHY?!? What parents would ever do this to a child? Shouldn't Fuller be sleeping with his parents, or in a sleeping bag? He has to share a bed with someone? How about in the second movie when his moronic father Frank tells him to "take it easy on the fluids – the rubber sheets are packed." WHY?!? You pack the rubber sheets when he still has another night in the house that he has to sleep in? Your brother's house and bed that he's nice enough to let you stay in the night before your vacation that he paid for?
I'm exhausted – that's all I can do for now. If there's any I missed, please feel free to contribute them to this post – if there's enough good ones (and there should be), we'll do a follow-up in the new year.
Image: Wikipedia


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Sky Striker is inspired by the classic carnival game High Striker, the traditional 'test of strength' or 'strong-man' game where a participant swings and strikes a base with an oversized mallet causing a puck to shoot up a vertical chart and strike a bell that measures his/her strength.
Sky Striker is rigged much like the traditional High Striker game with a mallet and base and tower, however, rather than seeing your results on a lighted board, they appeared on the adjacent 31-floor Rivergate Tower.
Sky Striker is designed and engineered by Chris Jones of Freeman Co and was a temporary installation for Lights On Tampa 2015. http://www.freemanco.com/
The concept of Sky Striker was developed by Traction Architecture is an award-winning architecture practice in Tampa, Florida led by principals, Jody Beck, AIA and Ross-Alan Tisdale, AIA. Beck, who established the company in 2010, received a Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies from Brown University and a Master of Architecture from SCI-Arc. Tisdale, who joined Traction Architecture in 2012, received a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Yale University and a Master of Architecture from SCI-Arc. The firm specializes in design for thoughtful living - the creation of modern, sustainable spaces that enhance the experience of the everyday. http://www.tractionarchitecture.com/
Photography by Matt May
Title: Sky Striker
Concept By: Traction Architecture
Technical Advisors: Freeman Audio Visual
Dimensions: variable
Materials: 40 ColorBlast LED Light 6-Pack, antenna system, cables, transmitters, striker
Location: Rivergate Tower & Kiley Gardens
Commissioning Agency: Public Art Alliance, SYKES Enterprises, City of Tampa's Downtown CRA Community Advisory Committee


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Otto: A name I won't forget on Memorial Day
Steve Otto | Tribune staff
May 26, 2013
This weekend we remember those who have given their lives for their country.
We also remember the ones left behind, the spouses and families who were suddenly all alone.
Tara Fuerst is one of those. When I heard that name the other day, my mind slipped back to when I was a Scout leader with my then-10-year-old son's Scout pack. I remembered a boy named Joseph Fuerst staring back at me wide-eyed after a ghost story told around a campfire on Egmont Key.
I remembered watching boys running down the beach, off to explore the ruins of the old fort and do whatever young boys do when camping on an island beach.
I remembered an altar boy at Christ the King Catholic Church and a laughing face in a crowd of boys racing wooden cars down chutes in the Pinewood Derby.
I remembered years later, June 24, 2006, when I heard the news that 26-year-old Army Staff Sgt. Joseph Fuerst III had been killed in the Panjway District of Afghanistan during combat operations. He had been assigned to the Army National Guard's 53rd Infantry Brigade when rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire struck his Humvee.
I remembered a flag-draped coffin and a military escort and a group of Boy Scouts in a procession down the church aisle. I remembered that.
I didn't know Tara Fuerst. They had not been married long when he went overseas. The two had purchased some land near Brooksville to settle down on after he got out that October. She was also in the Florida National Guard as a sergeant and was deployed at the same base in Afghanistan.
"It was so hard," she said by phone from her new home in Austin, Texas, where she now works with the American Widow Project.
"It was a long time before I allowed myself to laugh again, to feel like I was a part of the world going on around me. That's why I got involved with this organization."
The American Widows Project is an organization made up largely of widows of fallen soldiers. They offer peer counseling and other services to widowed spouses and children.
Which gets us to this coming Monday at the AMVETS Post 4, 1014 Skipper Road, Tampa, where there will be a "Memorial Day Recall" at 3 p.m.
The program is the idea of Tim Sullivan. The retired Army sergeant and former drill instructor was looking around for a way to get involved four years ago.
"I still have a son in the Navy in Norfolk. I saw what these women were doing to help each other and decided to have this recall. It's a program where you read the names of the fallen warriors out loud. This will be our fourth year.
"It's gotten fairly large. We had around 200 people last year. We sell some $1 hamburgers and hot dogs, have a raffle and raise a little money for the American Widow Project. We'll play some patriotic music, have a few bugle calls. It's a good thing."
It sounds like it. It sounds like exactly the right place to be on Monday. Not only that, Tara Fuerst will fly in from Texas and be at the AMVET center to read the name Joseph Fuerst III on a day we all remember so many other names.
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Otto: A name I won't forget on Memorial Day


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Ever since I re-instated firefox on my pc after working on my laptop for a while, and adding few extensions like Noscript and Adblock from mozilla the charts on blog stats and feeds page, stopped showing up..Immediately therefore the extensions were deleted thinking they might have been the culprit..but of no avail..the charts are still playing truant. Somehow this also seems to have affected search engine referrals, unexplainedly. They have dropped drastically.
Need help? Check out our Support site, then
Stat charts not showing up
try running firefox in the safe mode (not windows safe mode if you're using windows) .. the easiest way to do this by choosing Mozilla Firefox (Safemode) from the start menu, if you think that your mozilla firefox installation has been corrupted
and about search engine referal, it doesnt have anything to do with your charts(except there's problem with wordpress.com server) because referer get counted when someone click on your link from another website or search engine
reaperxzr thanks for the response.
The mozilla programme may not be corrupted but 'noscript' and 'adblock' may not have been compatible with wordpress as a server or my theme, rubrick. Also google is not able to access my wordpress site while it can my blogspot site.. I cannot say for sure what is the connection..I tried to come through the google account and it said ..error 404 on header..or that pages from my site cannot be displayed..
um ... actually im using noscript without problem :D ... you can safely enable scripting for this site (wordpress can be trusted, but if you still don't trust other wordpress users blogs, you can only enable scripting only for your site / blogs) ... as for adblock, i don't use it since im using other content filtering software.
as for the google, do you mean a google sitemap account ? if that's the case, there's no way you can validate your sitemap account because you can't upload the google verification file in wordpress nor editing the meta tags ... but if you can give me a more detailed explanation about this google thing maybe i can figure it out ;)
I use both NoScript and Adblock. The problem could be Adblock blocking the Flash content. My blog stats do not load automatically. I have to click a little play button. I set it that way.
, eclecticgeek
yes I know that google site map cannot be validated on wordpress. However, my reference was towards my account page at google..Although it reflected my wordpress account in detail..on clicking pages loaded it showed error.Also I read the tag disallowed somewhere. This has occurrred after Adblock of that I am certain as also the stat chart not showing up. Even up till few days ago I have referrals from google of my wordpress blog in first ten..the same referrals do not show my site any more. Ad block ought to have clarified just what it denotes in practical usage.., exactly what it is they will block and how does that translate google wise etc.. this is annoying.
since there has been no response from either wordpress or google.. I guess re loading my blog should be the option.. only I would like to refresh the same theme.. and there is no provision for that..
The forums are pretty much volenteer driven now. Best way to get an offical responce from staff would be via Feedback from your dashboard.
To refresh the theme, just choose another and then switch back afterwards.
The stat pages are run via Javascript and Flash with information coming from other servers. That might be why they're not coming up.
As to the broken links with Google, can't help unless we see an example.
thanks dr mike.Actually I have sent wordpress a feed back via the dashboard.
As for flash, I have reinstalled macro media..so the stats charts are now showing up.
I dont know what to do about the javascript issue. I had removed Noscript immediately from the tools drop box>extensions.Am I supposed to de-install elsewhere to complete the process?
Google referrals continue to be almost non existent..I dont know how to show you an example except if you care to see my stats charts for say on the 8th and compare with now..
does it make this post suitable for 'Are others facing stats problems too?'
Topic Closed
This topic has been closed to new replies.


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TAMPA - A father is dead after being stabbed to death and his son is behind bars.
Tampa Police say just before 9 p.m. Thursday, they were called to the 2600 block of E 18th Ave in reference to a fight and possible stabbing. When officers arrived, they found a 43-year-old man suffering from multiple stab wounds. Damon D. Larry was transported to a local hospital where he later died.
After investigation, it was determined his 23-year-old son, identified as Damon Timothy Larry, 23, attacked his father and the two got into a fist fight. One witness said his dad attempted to back away and fell, but his son continued to stab him.
The 23-year-old was arrested without incident and charged with second degree murder with a weapon.


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One recent December, at age 53, John Kralik found his life at a terrible, frightening low: his small law firm was failing; he was struggling through a painful second divorce; he had grown distant from his two older children and was afraid he might lose contact with his young daughter; he was living in a tiny apartment where he froze in the winter and baked in the summer; he was 40 pounds overweight; his girlfriend had just broken up with him; and overall, his dearest life dreams--including hopes of upholding idealistic legal principles and of becoming a judge--seemed to have slipped beyond his reach.
Then, during a desperate walk in the hills on New Year's Day, John was struck by the belief that his life might become at least tolerable if, instead of focusing on what he didn't have, he could find some way to be grateful for what he had.
Inspired by a beautiful, simple note his ex-girlfriend had sent to thank him for his Christmas gift, John imagined that he might find a way to feel grateful by writing thank-you notes. To keep himself going, he set himself a goal--come what may--of writing 365 thank-you notes in the coming year.
One by one, day after day, he began to handwrite thank yous--for gifts or kindnesses he'd received from loved ones and coworkers, from past business associates and current foes, from college friends and doctors and store clerks and handymen and neighbors, and anyone, really, absolutely anyone, who'd done him a good turn, however large or small. Immediately after he'd sent his very first notes, significant and surprising benefits began to come John's way--from financial gain to true friendship, from weight loss to inner peace. While John wrote his notes, the economy collapsed, the bank across the street from his office failed, but thank-you note by thank-you note, John's whole life turned around.
A Simple Act of Gratitude is a rare memoir: its touching, immediately accessible message--and benefits--come to readers from the plainspoken storytelling of an ordinary man. Kralik sets a believable, doable example of how to live a miraculously good life. To read A Simple Act of Gratitude is to be changed.
Falling in love is easy. Staying in love-that's the challenge! How can you keep your relationship fresh and growing amid the demands and conflicts and just plain boredom of everyday life?
In the #1 New York Times bestselling book The 5 Love Languages, you'll discover the secret that has transformed millions of relationships worldwide. Whether your relationship is flourishing or failing, Dr. Gary Chapman's proven approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner-starting today.
"If we learn to meet each other's deep emotional need to feel loved, and choose to do it, the love we share will be exciting beyond anything we've ever felt."-Gary Chapman
The 5 Love Languages is as practical as it is insightful. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships in today's world, this new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant, actionable wisdom in ways that work. Practice the simple steps outlined in each chapter and you'll be on your way to a healthier, mutually beneficial relationship.
Many of your emotional responses, regardless of how much strength you've given them, can be brought down, deconstructed and reshaped. You will just have to learn how to give your knee-jerk response to emotional stimuli less strength - LESS OF A JERK. To do that you will have to commit to reinventing the way you think and behave. With Go Suck a Lemon, you will approach that task by accepting and then adapting to a no-nonsense style of emotional problem solving. You will learn and use a process of level-headed decision-making. You will try to become more efficient, flexible and open-minded when addressing your emotional problems. You will learn that there is always another emotional option. You will learn to make fact-based observations, something most of us are unfamiliar with doing. You will also incorporate in vivo (in life) exposure, i.e., homework, to encourage you to independently act against your learned thoughts and behaviors. In the end, you will become more informed, increasingly more capable and far more emotionally self-reliant. Instead of being your own worst enemy, you will become your own best friend - your own therapist.
We may be strengthened when we learn to be emotionally self-reliant, to free ourselves from emotional helplessness and our dependence on others for our emotional solutions.
"Perhaps no book in this generation has had a more profound impact on our intellectual and spiritual lives than The Road Less Traveled. With sales of more than seven million copies in the United States and Canada, and translations into more than twenty-three languages, it has made publishing history, with more than ten years on the New York Times bestseller list.
Written in a voice that is timeless in its message of understanding, The Road Less Traveled continues to help us explore the very nature of loving relationships and leads us toward a new serenity and fullness of life. It helps us learn how to distinguish dependency from love; how to become a more sensitive parent; and ultimately how to become one's own true self.
Recognizing that, as in the famous opening line of his book, "Life is difficult" and that the journey to spiritual growth is a long one, Dr. Peck never bullies his readers, but rather guides them gently through the hard and often painful process of change toward a higher level of self-understanding." - Amazon
"In 1939, as Hitler casts his enormous, cruel shadow across the world, the seeds of apartheid take root in South Africa. There, a boy called Peekay is born. His childhood is marked by humiliation and abandonment, yet he vows to survive and conceives heroic dreams–which are nothing compared to what life actually has in store for him. He embarks on an epic journey through a land of tribal superstition and modern prejudice where he will learn the power of words, the power to transform lives, and the power of one." - Amazon


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22 U.S. Code § 286i - Stabilization loans by Bank; amendment to Articles of Agreement
The governor and executive director of the Bank appointed by the United States are directed to obtain promptly an official interpretation by the Bank as to its authority to make or guarantee loans for programs of economic reconstruction and the reconstruction of monetary systems, including long-term stabilization loans. If the Bank does not interpret its powers to include the making or guaranteeing of such loans, the governor of the Bank representing the United States is directed to propose promptly and support an amendment to the Articles of Agreement for the purpose of explicitly authorizing the Bank, after consultation with the Fund, to make or guarantee such loans. The President is authorized and directed to accept an amendment to that effect on behalf of the United States.
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Sandro Hawke wrote: > To help keep us on track for Phase 1, the charter gives us a limit > (roughly Horn rules) on which features of each system we will cover. > Within that limit, I'm not sure there are many questions about which > systems to cover. "Roughly Horn rules" seems to exclude - production rules (and ECA/reaction rules) - nonmonotonic reasoning rules (for defaults and heuristics) It seems to include: - limited forms of constructive derivation rules (such as SQL views without negation) - limited forms of (normative) integrity rules/constraints (such as certain SQL ASSERTION clauses) Ian Horrocks wrote: > If the RIF supports rules with different meanings (i.e., > where different behaviour of the consuming system is > expected), then clearly > they would need to be distinguished. I don't see anyone > disagreeing about that. OK, then we agree on Francois' proposal to mark/annotate the distinction between these different types of rules (I think this was the main point of the debate, and not the issue of efficient proof theories). -GerdReceived on Sunday, 12 March 2006 23:13:06 UTC
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Muskoka Traditions
An insider's tour of a premier vacation destination.
Handsomely illustrated, Muskoka Traditions captures the many ways of life that make Ontario's most famous lake district an extraordinary place for generation after generation of residents and cottagers. The first embracing dive of the season. Musky woodland hunts for springtime's wild leeks and mushrooms. Exciting annual regattas and glamorous vintage boat shows. Midsummer memories of big-band nights at Dunn's Pavilion. A tour aboard the majestic Segwun, the oldest commercial vessel in North America. Piloting a sleek mahogany launch along Millionaire's Row. Silent, snowy February days at historic Clevelands House. It's all here in this heartfelt collection of photographs and essays by two of Muskoka's longtime residents.
You will meet boatbuilders and boat collectors, Native artisans and modern painters, farmers and steamboat engineers, owners of rustic cottages and proprietors of top-notch resorts, and explore how pioneer Muskoka became Ontario's cottage country.
With a foreword by Ontario Lieutenant-Governor James Bartleman, this book presents an insider's look at Muskoka's rich history and culture.
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Both women sociologists and Du Bois espoused a "standpoint theory". What does standpoint theory mean in terms of the theoretical work of women and minorities?
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Standpoint theory is a postmodern sociological theory that emphasizes the relationship between social location and knowledge or perspective. Standpoint theory suggests that an individual's perspective is rooted in his or her social identity. This identity might include race, class, gender, nationality, religion or ethnicity.
Standpoint theory also examines the way in which knowledge is constructed within hierarchical structures such as academia. W.E.B. Du Bois and feminists sociologists use standpoint theory in order to illuminate issues of race, gender and class when it comes to the construction of knowledge. These theorists seek to destabilize the idea of knowledge as objective. Instead, they argue, knowledge is socially constructed and thus reflects the power dynamics of society at large.


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The Incarnation Taboo
©1999 Lawrence Gold, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ow many of us remember the moods of our childhood - not just selected incidents, but the feeling we had, upon awakening in the morning, our perception of life, our dreams?
How many, fewer still, remember our infancy and its perceptions and dreams?
And fewer still, our first dreams.
Some of us have an intuition of our pre-birth state, our emergence from a deep unknown merged with dreams, and some of us may even have memories of what seem to be previous lives, vivid dreams of other times, other places, other faces, another world.
But each and all of us come into this life and land in the midst of a taboo that cuts us off from our own lives. Some of us escape it, others of us live it and end up enforcing and reinforcing it.
What is this taboo?
It is a primal logic that controls the two most basic faculties possessed by everyone: attention and intention. It is an action of self-limitation expressed in myriad ways throughout a lifetime.
It is The Incarnation Taboo.
Let us view this taboo and discover its surprisingly obvious secrets.
Unlike all other species on Earth, we humans are products of learning far more than of instinct. Learning is our means of incarnating more completely. Consider:
Our entire civilization, even those cultures considered most primitive, are edifices of artifice in which the natural order is not merely used, but transformed for use in uniquely human ways. We are, at the very least, tool-makers.
This is not to say that we humans are the only toolmakers, but that our lives are predominantly artificial, from language to technology. Culture is a structure of artifices, a system of problems and learned solutions.
Who, upon birth, has any idea of what great learnings lie before them?
Toilet training, language, acceptable social behaviors, then imaginative play and disciplined learning: rites of passage into a complex world derived from the interplay of human imagination and the natural world. At last, for many if not most, entrenchment and fixation in a class-and-role in the socio-econo-political order follows.
The fixation comes from both within and from without. It is created and maintained by the Incarnation Taboo. It is learned, then, commonly, adopted.
Because we humans are predominantly a learning (rather than instinctual) species, we tend to imbue our learnings with the same unquestioning force as the other species do their instincts. We protect and sustain ourselves via our learnings, as other species do via their instincts. One more thing: we protect our learnings, where other species have not even the slightest self-awareness of their instincts, and so do not protect them.
The first imperative of newborn human beings, after the instinct to suckle, is to learn, to absorb experience. The first need is contact. The first mood is fascination, then curiosity. Play follows, then imaginative play. Creativity begins, quickly going beyond rehearsal of instinctive behaviors.
The first agency of that learning is the family, soon followed by the social circle of friends, religious institutions, the mass-communications media, and formal education.
Children often have unusual experiences that do not fit the perceptual frameworks of adults. The dark of night often sets the stage for such experiences. Sometimes they are frightening, and adults seek to quell them and to reassure by saying, "It's just your imagination," or "It's only a dream." They discourage daydreaming and imagination. By so doing, they convey the idea that only the waking state, and their ideas of it (which differ wildly from person to person), is valid. The suppression of the deep psyche begins.
After a certain point, the imagination is systematically suppressed in favor of required learnings, entrenched imaginings (mass-entertainment, news and politics) and the tangible ways of life of the adult world. Thus, The Incarnation Taboo is taught and learned.
The integration, absorption, or assimilation of experiences is the primary impulse of all of life.
What does the term, "The integration of experiences," mean? "Integration" means "wholeness" -- as in the putting together of ingredients in an organized way to make a functioning whole. Think of learning to cook or to build something useful. "To experience" is to perceive directly, through any mode of perception, e.g., mentally, you experience thoughts; emotionally, you experience emotions; physically, you experience sensations; intuitively, you experience impressions. Experiencing affects us. Think of tasting what you cook or using what you have built. Cooking and tasting, eating and absorbing. Using and enjoying. Integrating experience is absorbing it, as opposed to resisting it.
To integrate an experience is to feel it freely and without compulsion and to experience it as a functional relationship. It's the sense of being of one mind and in control of ones faculties.
The whole world is a testimony to the integration of experience into functioning wholes: family relationships, societies, languages, systems of knowledge, inventions that work, laws of nature, ecosystems, planetary systems, galaxies, and on and on.
For a human being, to integrate an experience is to feel it freely and without compulsion and to experience it as a functional relationship. It's the sense of being of one mind and in control of ones faculties. Take a moment with that idea. . . . .
One of the paradoxes of life is that resistance to the integration of experience is one of the experiences possible. In human beings, this paradox shows up as "the Incarnation Taboo," a kind of anti-embodiment sentiment found in many religions and spiritual practices, and also in the attitudes and ways of operating of persons and entire secular cultures.
"The Incarnation Taboo" seems, at first, to be an extremely vague term, and yet it is an extremely accurate one. It seems vague because it is so comprehensive. "Incarnation", in its more common usage, refers to the process of having been born and being bodily alive; in its fullest sense, the word refers to the total range of experience a living being is capable of experiencing. "Taboo" refers to a ban with consequences. The Incarnation Taboo is a ban on experiencing the total range of experiences and functions of which a living being is capable, and in a subtler form, the attitudes that "I am not the body", and "the body isn't important."
Let's take some obvious examples: sex and violence.
The cultural onus on pornography and prostitution and the daunting nature of strong sexual attractions point to how shocked people feel when confronted with the intense sensations of sexuality. The Incarnation Taboo seeks to reduce the intensity of these sensations, both individually and by law and custom.
Violent entertainment provides another example: People cringe at initial exposures to violence and then, as they become desensitized to the sensations, may seek repeated exposures, which they may consider pleasurable at the reduced level of intensity. At reduced levels of intensity, the feelings are "safe." In this case, The Incarnation Taboo often leads to a kind of psychological addiction to violence, as other entertainments seem insufficiently stimulating, even boring, hence the predominance of violence in our entertainment industry and news-entertainment media.
The Incarnation Taboo seeks to reduce the intensity of these sensations by desensitizing the individual. Even those who seek the adrenaline rush of extreme sports (which, like violent entertainment, is addictive) do so to reinforce their sense of invulnerability to danger. "I survived." The sense of danger is one of the wisdoms of the body by which life (incarnation) is protected. Desensitizing oneself to danger is one form of The Incarnation Taboo; one does not experience full incarnation if one does not experience mortality. Who wants to experience mortality? That's the Incarnation Taboo.
The fear of death is an odd form of The Incarnation Taboo, since it would seem to preserve life. Death is the ultimate intense experience. Unlike other experiences, it is extreme beyond understanding and irrevocable.
But there is a more common form of The Incarnation Taboo. It is the egoic self, "me". When the ego exercises The Incarnation Taboo, it seeks to avoid responsibility.
The attainment of adulthood, for so many, means not having to obey someone else, not having to learn, and not having to change attitudes to suit someone else. It is resistance to childhood. The Incarnation Taboo resists new experiences, new functions and new responsibilities. It resists change for "reasons."
But even more basic than this is The Incarnation Taboo against feeling bodily existence. The rationale for this form of the taboo is "pain." There, the justification for The Incarnation Taboo becomes absolutely reasonable.
Unfortunately and too often, people desensitize themselves to experience and then indulge in it, like eating without really tasting. They consume what, to the sensibilities, is unpalatable, in mass quantities. They desensitize themselves and consume. Think of Heavy Metal music; think of the role of alcohol in our society; think of the content of our entertainment media, pervaded by clichés of sex, violence, and heroic crisis; think of tobacco smoking -- all unpalatable upon first exposure. There is a lack of discrimination that accompanies our desensitized culture.
From looking at these examples, we can see that The Incarnation Taboo has a kind of purpose: to avoid experience.
The Incarnation Taboo subtly makes tolerable and therefore permits justification of mediocrity, poor health, incompetence, cruelty, stupidity, selfishness, prejudice, ignorance, and irresponsibility. It is the reason for the repression of children, women, entire social classes and ethnic groups, and also for chronic poverty, frustration and self-limitation. It is the reason criminal behavior is considered inevitable ("You can't change human nature" -- a particularly irresponsible form of The Incarnation Taboo).
Consider the common behavior of blaming people who tell the truth about something ("whistle blowers") for "making others look bad." Consider their fate. The same attitude underlies the resentment some people have for people who do their work "too well" and "make" their co-workers "look bad". Rather than correct a situation or improve themselves, such people seek to sabotage those who do function well. Such envious people would rather drag others down than raise themselves up. "Don't be too good,"is a form of The Incarnation Taboo.
The Incarnation Taboo is, "Don't mess with me" - or "Don't tell me what to do."
The "too good" syndrome has another form: ignoring opportunities that would end chronic problems. People sometimes prefer to have problems and complain about them than solve the problems and have to face changes that would result. The rationale sometimes used: "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is." Good news is suspect. Extremely good news lacks credibility: it is literally incredible. So people avoid even the good things they say they want.
Yet another form is the unwillingness or inability of people to exercise their own intelligence; many people would rather look for a stamp of approval from some authority than consider matters for themselves. With the abundance of incomplete information (broadcast news) and nonsensical communications (much entertainment and advertising) passed along by the mass-media, many people lack the perspective that distinguishes useful information from opinion or outright stupidity. The News is more entertainment than information and dulls the perceptual faculties.
Perhaps the phrase that expresses The Incarnation Taboo is, "Don't mess with me" - or "Don't tell me what to do."
So, what is the opposite of The Incarnation Taboo?
It is conscious incarnation.
There is a peculiar assumption that nearly everyone has, an opinion that some uphold with a great deal of energy, that because one is born, one is fully incarnated (just as, "because one is an adult, one is mature"). Maybe in the abstract, but not necessarily.
Obvious when considered: perception is learned. Think of the wine epicure who can distinguish flavors missed by the casual wine drinker; think of the color sense of the interior decorator, the sense of form of the graphic designer, the ability to remember faces, the ability of an infant to remember her or his mother's face, the nuances of perception that appear as our vocabulary increases -- all perceptual abilities that are learned. In fact, the growth of any skill depends upon a growing ability to distinguish actions that lead to the desired result from actions that do not.
What is incarnation but the ability to sense and participate in life?
These distinctions create a more vivid sense of life. The actions that become possible on the basis of these distinctions create more flexibility and control in life.
Now, what is incarnation but the ability to sense and participate in life?
Since these abilities can grow, I ask you to consider that perhaps incarnation grows (and also can decrease gradually, as well as suddenly in death).
At this juncture in the discussion, perhaps we are encountering the Incarnation Taboo, itself: the willingness or unwillingness to experience something new. The unwillingness is The Incarnation Taboo, in action. In some, it is a kind of inertia; and in others, it is an active resistance.
The development of the abilities to sense and participate in life has been the task of a single process that has fallen into disfavor, in these times: education -- and with good reason: public education has been co-opted by The Incarnation Taboo. Today's basic education is predominantly mental; it does not develop sensory-awareness (perceptiveness) except in service to what is already known; imagination is somehow required or hoped for, but rarely skillfully cultivated; emotional sensibility (discrimination) is totally overlooked (consider the customs of alcohol use on university campuses and hazing on military academy campuses); and wise control of ones own physical processes, unaddressed (consider the quality of university and hospital food). Think of the cutting of funds for courses in the arts. Think of the outcry against sex-education.
As a long-term result of The Incarnation Taboo, we have an unhealthy, crime-burdened, politically disenfranchised society in which people age poorly and in which mental rules (letter of the law) thwart justice (the spirit of the law) to protect established money-and-power interests, or in which court-trials place legalities above reason and sensibility. Think of wasteful military spending and ridiculous court-trial outcomes publicized in the news.
Where people fail to learn, they fail in their ability (and willingness) to assume responsibilities; instead, they want others to assume those responsibilities. Such is the hope of children, of apathetic voters, of the clients of lawyers, of many patients of doctors, and of all who wish to remain dependent and to learn the minimum needed to get by. It is the hazard of all political and legal systems. The Incarnation Taboo leads to chronic immaturity.
The pitfall of the Learning species
There is an oddity to the human species. Because we are learning-driven, we tend to hold onto old viewpoints as if our survival depends upon it, which it does. However, holding onto old viewpoints when conditions change places us at an adaptive disadvantage and hampers our civilization. This is a kind of failure to eliminate the "waste" of life; obsolete ideas and responses pile up in the individual, complicating their life and those of others. Life becomes a backlog of resisted changes; people fall behind the times, fail to correct their mistakes, or simply fail to mature.
There is a more basic form of the Incarnation Taboo, having to do with awareness of our own ways of operating, mentally, emotionally, and physically. For the most part, people do not inspect their own habitual ways of operating, nor do they want others to do so. People tend to live out, without question, what they have inherited from family, society, the mass-communications media, and the educational institutions, and much of this inheritance consists of ways of feeling one way and acting another, referred to as "manners" and "necessary compromises". In general, to question the beliefs and assumptions underlying people's ways of operating provokes resistance; people don't like being questioned into greater awareness - again, the Incarnation Taboo, in action.
Many humans, we being "the learning species," are in a particular fix: we mistake conditioned knowledge for instincts; we live what we have learned without question until a crisis befalls us.
When animals act instinctively, they do so automatically and without question. They react, applying no intelligence to their reaction.
When humans act instinctively, there is no problem, as we have few instincts and those are benign; but people who confuse conditioned learning with unquestionable instinct act irrationally and tend to uphold arbitary, fixed beliefs inherited from family, society, and the mass-communications media - again, without question, often, militantly. Consider the historic Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the antagonism of the Catholic Church to the discoveries of Galileo; consider the emergence of the Nazi party, homophobia and the religious extreme-Right.
Individuals who inspect their ways of operating may be called "introspective"; some people may criticize them as being "self-involved". In general, they operate at a higher level of functioning than the usual individual. They integrate experience, rather than merely "survive" it. They are more fully incarnated.
When we place our attention on our intentions, we have self-knowledge; when we exercise our intentions with full attention, we have actions done on-purpose, more likely to produce the desired outcome than actions done with less attention.
Herein lies the secret of incarnation: it is the link between the ability to perceive clearly and the ability to act accordingly -- or the link between attention and intention. It is this link which is weakened in our society of news, entertainment, and nutrient-deficient foods. The Incarnation Taboo weakens the link between what we perceive and what we do about it; it is the breakdown of responsibility. Inured to dullness and mediocrity, people go on tolerating the day-to-day breakdowns of a society built upon the aberrations, idiosyncrasies and incompetencies that result from The Incarnation Taboo. This state of breakdown is not, by any means, absolute. But its extent is commonly acknowledged by the popular maxims that, "Twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work," and "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
When we place our attention on our intentions, we have self-knowledge; when we exercise our intentions with full attention, we have actions done on-purpose, more likely to produce the desired outcome than actions done with less attention.
The physical body is our means of getting handle on life - and a way life can get a handle on us.
The physical body is our means of getting handle on life - and a way life can get a handle on us.
In human beings, the Incarnation Taboo shows up bodily as a nearly universal failure (at least in industrialized societies) to sense the physical body accurately and to move well. It has been my astonishing experience that about four out of five people who come to me in my clinical practice have trouble deciding which side is their right or their left, when asked to do a new movement.
Most people are unaware that their body-sense is as distorted as their posture; on one hand, they are concerned more with how they look than with how they feel, and on the other they fail to recognize that how they feel is how they look, if only they could see it. They have great gaps in their bodily awareness in which they do not feel much, except for accentuated pleasure and pain in areas of the body where they hold the muscular tensions and stresses they have accumulated from the insults and injuries of life. It is a kind of amnesia -- the disowning of the bodily self that goes with the mass of taboos against all kinds of experience, including those named above. People are often expected to ignore the pain and to function; that's one form of The Incarnation Taboo at this level.
This bodily amnesia has everything to do with a person's ability to function in life. All of the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to which we are accustomed involve states of readiness to act in certain ways; such "readiness" is a state of heightened tension in the musculature of the body. It creates common back trouble and headaches and the pains and stiffness of aging. It also clouds the mental processes.
Until a person fully incarnates, they cannot sense and release these tensions. The tensions accumulate. The price is poor aging.
In order to master our environment, we must first master ourselves. Then, we have the instrumentality to get a handle on our environment.
As with all perception, the ability to perceive the physical body is learned. As with all education, there is a deliberate course that may be followed to incarnate more fully. Somatic education is the name of the process by which it occurs. Somatic education is a movement-and-feeling-based process that improves our quality of movement and our ability to sense our own movement. It involves improving our senses (the exercise of attention) and our control of movement (the exercise of intention). We humans are the "learning species"; we do not incarnate automatically; we must deliberately learn to do so.
In order to master our environment, we must first master ourselves. Then, we have the instrumentality to get a handle on our environment.
We now reach the essence of conscious incarnation: directing attention and exercising intention. All life forms do so, but as said before, they do so primarily instinctually. Humans direct attention and exercise intention according to learned patterns of what is important. A further step, for humans, is to direct attention and exercise intention deliberately, beyond the repetitive patterns of habit. Such is learning and creativity -- and acting on purpose. Indeed, the act of learning is a purposeful act, since it involves developing new patterns of function that can be exercised at will.
The Incarnation Taboo prompts us to deny that we act on purpose in certain instances, since to acknowledge our purposeful acts makes us vulnerable to their consequences -- even if only to defend against them. The Integration Taboo impairs our willingness and ability to act on purpose, and therefore to have full power to direct our attention and to exercise our intention. The Incarnation Taboo weakens us. Understand?
The Incarnation Taboo affects us at every level of life. So we have a choice: succumb to The Incarnation Taboo and become desensitized, or become more sensitive (perceptive) and connect with others who are overcoming The Incarnation Taboo in themselves, who are waking up. Together, we can help each other get free of the Incarnation Taboo, create a more intelligent world, and more fully incarnate into a life worth experiencing.
The Incarnation Taboo is the first hurdle to the integration of experience. At first inherited automatically and unconsciously, it makes us not want to experience our own, present condition. Therefore, it is the primary experience we must integrate by recognizing it as our own, voluntary mood. Once we do that, the process of integrating experience is understood, and we can fulfill the purpose of life, which is to experience and absorb the total range of experiences and functions of which we are capable, the limits of which are forever unknown and expanded by life.
For many people, to live at their fullest potential seems like an attractive, even romantically appealing idea, or at least one that should be appealing. However, people may at the same time feel a kind of unwillingness to go through what it would take to live that way.
Some people may feel a kind of desire to be excused from what they may feel to be a sense of obligation to live at their highest potential. But you don't really want that.
Because you're here.
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