From a Douglas MacArthur speech

A magnificent passage from a speech of General Douglas MacArthur

“People grow old only by deserting their ideals, Macarthur had written. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only, are you grown old. And then, indeed as the ballad says, you just fade away.”

Truisms (b-f)

• bad intentions can yield good results
• being alone with yourself is increasingly unpopular
• being happy is more important than anything else
• being judgmental is a sign of life
• being sure of yourself means you're a fool
• believing in rebirth is the same as admitting defeat
• boredom makes you do crazy things
• calm is more conductive to creativity than is anxiety
• categorizing fear is calming
• change is valuable when the oppressed become tyrants
• chasing the new is dangerous to society
• children are the most cruel of all
• children are the hope of the future
• class action is a nice idea with no substance
• class structure is as artificial as plastic
• confusing yourself is a way to stay honest
• crime against property is relatively unimportant
• decadence can be an end in itself
• decency is a relative thing
• dependence can be a meal ticket
• description is more important than metaphor
• deviants are sacrificed to increase group solidarity
• disgust is the appropriate response to most situations
• disorganization is a kind of anesthesia
• don't place to much trust in experts
• drama often obscures the real issues
• dreaming while awake is a frightening contradiction
• dying and coming back gives you considerable perspective
• dying should be as easy as falling off a log
• eating too much is criminal
• elaboration is a form of pollution
• emotional responses ar as valuable as intellectual responses
• enjoy yourself because you can't change anything anyway
• ensure that your life stays in flux
• even your family can betray you
• every achievement requires a sacrifice
• everyone's work is equally important
• everything that's interesting is new
• exceptional people deserve special concessions
• expiring for love is beautiful but stupid
• expressing anger is necessary
• extreme behavior has its basis in pathological psychology
• extreme self-consciousness leads to perversion
• faithfulness is a social not a biological law
• fake or real indifference is a powerful personal weapon
• fathers often use too much force
• fear is the greatest incapacitator
• freedom is a luxury not a necessity

Insults. A useful guide

• He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.- Groucho Marx
• His mind is so open - so open that ideas simply pass through it. - F. H. Bradley
• "The stupid person's idea of a clever person." - Elizabeth Bowen talking about Aldous Huxley
• Are you always this stupid or are you making a special effort today
• Brains aren't everything. In fact in your case they're nothing
• Don't let you mind wander - it's far too small to be let out on its own .
• He always finds himself lost in thought - it's an unfamiliar territory.
• He doesn't know the meaning of the word "fear" - but then again he doesn't know the meaning of most words.
• I don't know what makes you so dumb but it really works.
• Oh my God, look at you. Anyone else hurt in the accident? - Don Rickles
• She loves 'NATURE' - In spite of what it did to her.
• Do you still love nature, despite what it did to you?
• I don't want you to turn the other cheek - it's just as ugly.
• See, that's what's meant by dark and handsome. When it's dark, he's handsome.
• Any similarity between you and a human is purely coincidental!
• Anyone who told you to be yourself couldn't have given you worse advice.
• Are your parents siblings?
• As an outsider, what do you think of the human race?
• Better at sex than anyone; now all he needs is a partner.
• Calling you stupid would be an insult to stupid people.
• Did your parents ever ask you to run away from home?
• Do you ever wonder what life would be like if you'd had enough oxygen at birth?
• Do you want people to accept you as you are or do you want them to like you?
• Don't you need a license to be that ugly?
• Every girl has the right to be ugly, but you abused the privilege!
• Have you considered suing your brains for non-support?
• He has a mind like a steel trap - always closed!
• He is living proof that man can live without a brain!
• He is the kind of a man that you would use as a blueprint to build an idiot.
• He's not stupid; he's possessed by a retarded ghost.
• Here's 20 cents. Call all your friends and bring back some change!
• Hi! I'm a human being! What are you?
• How did you get here? Did someone leave your cage open?
• I'd like to see things from your point of view but I can't seem to get my head that far up my ass.
• I bet your brain feels as good as new, seeing that you've never used it.
• I don't consider you a vulture. I consider you something a vulture would eat.
• I don't think you are a fool. But then what's MY opinion against thousands of others?
• I heard you got a brain transplant and the brain rejected you!
• I know you are nobody's fool but maybe someone will adopt you.
• I thought of you all day today. I was at the zoo.
• I would ask you how old you are but I know you can't count that high.
• I'd like to help you out. Which way did you come in?
• I'd like to leave you with one thought...but I'm not sure you have anywhere to put it!
• I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV.
• I'll never forget the first time we met - although I'll keep trying.
• I'm busy now. Can I ignore you some other time?
• I've seen people like you before, but I had to pay admission!
• If ignorance is bliss, you must be the happiest person alive.
• If we were to kill everybody who hates you, it wouldn't be murder; it would be genocide!
• If what you don't know can't hurt you, she's invulnerable.
• If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean.
• If your brain was chocolate it wouldn't fill an M&M.
• Keep talking, someday you'll say something intelligent.
• Learn from your parents' mistakes - use birth control!
• Pardon me, but you've obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a damn.
• So, a thought crossed your mind? Must have been a long and lonely journey.
• Some day you will find yourself - and wish you hadn't.
• There is no vaccine against stupidity.
• Just because nobody understands you doesn't mean you're an artist."
• Go ahead, tell them everything you know. It'll only take 10 seconds."
• Seeing you makes me think "somewhere, there's a village missing an idiot."

Security. Deny it

Security is Mostly a Superstition.
It Does Not Exist in Nature, Nor do
the Children of Humans as a Whole
Experience it. Avoiding Danger is no
Safer in the Long Run than Outright Exposure.
Life is Either a Daring Adventure or Nothing.

- Helen Keller (deaf & blind writer)

Truisms (a)

• a positive attitude means all the difference in the world
• a relaxed man is not necessarily a better man
• a sense of timing is the mark of genius
• a sincere effort is all you can ask
• a single event can have infinitely many interpretations
• a solid home base builds a sense of self
• a strong sense of duty imprisons you
• absolute submission can be a form of freedom
• abstraction is a type of decadence
• abuse of power comes as no surprise
• action causes more trouble than thought
• alienation produces eccentrics or revolutionaries
• all things are delicately interconnected
• ambition is just as dangerous as complacency
• ambivalence can ruin your life
• an elite is inevitable
• anger or hate can be a useful motivating force
• animalism is perfectly healthy
• any surplus is immoral
• anything is a legitimate area of investigation
• artificial desires are despoiling the earth
• at times inactivity is preferable to mindless functioning
• at times your unconsciousness is truer than your conscious mind
• automation is deadly
• awful punishment awaits really bad people

Interesting facts

• The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.
• Of all the words in the English language, the word 'set' has the most definitions!
• What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as an "English kiss" in France.
• A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off!
• Horatio Nelson, one of England's most illustrious admirals was throughout his life, never able to find a cure for his sea-sickness.
• The skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is present at all important meetings of the University of London
• Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people
• Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin!
• The present population of 5 billion plus people of the world is predicted to become 15 billion by 2080.
• Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and had only ONE testicle.
• Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.
• Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."
• Coca-Cola would be green if colouring weren’t added to it.
• More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.
• The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.
• More people are allergic to cow's milk than any other food.
• Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.
• The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times!
• The six official languages of the United Nations are: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish.
• It's against the law to burp, or sneeze in a church in Nebraska, USA.
• You're born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206.
• Some worms will eat themselves if they can't find any food!
• Dolphins sleep with one eye open!
• It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open
• Queen Elizabeth I regarded herself as a paragon of cleanliness. She declared that she bathed once every three months, whether she needed it or not
• Slugs have 4 noses.
• Owls are the only birds who can see the colour blue.
• A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years!
• A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!
• The average person laughs 10 times a day!
• An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain

The new James Bond. A masterpiece? Reviews

It seems that there is a consensus that the new Bond film is really good. I post parts from the NY Times and Washington Post film reviews.


November 17, 2006

MOVIE REVIEW | 'CASINO ROYALE'

Renewing a License to Kill and a Huge Movie Franchise

By MANOHLA DARGIS

The latest James Bond vehicle — call him Bond, Bond 6.0 — finds the British spy leaner, meaner and a whole lot darker. Now played by an attractive bit of blond rough named Daniel Craig, Pierce Brosnan having been permanently kicked to the kerb, Her Majesty’s favorite bad boy arrives on screens with the usual complement of cool toys, smooth rides, bosomy women and high expectations. He shoots, he scores, in bed and out, taking down the bad and the beautiful as he strides purposefully into the 21st century.

It’s about time. The likable Mr. Brosnan was always more persuasive playing Bond as a metaphoric rather than an actual lady-killer, with the sort of polished affect and blow-dried good looks that these days tend to work better either on television or against the grain. Two of his best performances have been almost aggressively anti-Bond turns, first in John Boorman’s adaptation of the John le Carré novel “The Tailor of Panama,”

Every generation gets the Bond it deserves if not necessarily desires, and with his creased face and uneasy smile, Mr. Craig fits these grim times well. As if to underscore the idea that this new Bond marks a decisive break with the contemporary iterations, “Casino Royale” opens with a black-and-white sequence that finds the spy making his first government-sanctioned kills. The inky blood soon gives way to full-blown color, but not until Bond has killed one man with his hands after a violent struggle and fatally shot a second. “Made you feel it, did he?” someone asks Bond of his first victim. Bond doesn’t answer. From the way the director, Martin Campbell, stages the action though, it’s clear that he wants to make sure we do feel it.

“Casino Royale” introduced Bond to the world in 1953. A year later it was made into a television drama with the American actor Barry Nelson as Jimmy Bond; the following decade, it was a ham-fisted spoof with David Niven as the spy and a very funny Peter Sellers as a card shark. For reasons that are too boring to repeat, when Ian Fleming sold the film rights to Bond, “Casino Royale” was not part of the deal. As a consequence the producers who held most of the rights decided to take their cue from news reports about misfired missiles, placing their bets on “Dr. No” and its missile-mad villain. The first big-screen Bond, it hit in October 1962, the same month that Fleming’s fan John F. Kennedy took the Cuban missile crisis public.

The Vatican later condemned “Dr. No” as a dangerous mixture of violence, vulgarity, sadism and sex.

Ka-ching! The film was a success, as was its relatively unknown star, Sean Connery, who balanced those descriptive notes beautifully, particularly in the first film and its even better follow-up, “From Russia With Love.”

In time Mr. Connery’s conception of the character softened, as did the series itself, and both Roger Moore and Mr. Brosnan portrayed the spy as something of a gentleman playboy. That probably helps explain why some Bond fanatics have objected so violently to Mr. Craig, who fits Fleming’s description of the character as appearing “ironical, brutal and cold” better than any actor since Mr. Connery. Mr. Craig’s Bond looks as if he has renewed his license to kill.

Like a lot of action films, the Bond franchise has always used comedy to blunt the violence and bring in big audiences. And, much like the franchise’s increasingly bloated action sequences, which always seem to involve thousands of uniformed extras scurrying around sets the size of Rhode Island, the humor eventually leached the series of its excitement, its sense of risk. Mr. Brosnan certainly looked the part when he suited up for “GoldenEye” in 1995, but by then John Woo and Quentin Tarantino had so thoroughly rearranged the DNA of the modern action film as to knock 007 back to zero. By the time the last Bond landed in 2002, Matt Damon was rearranging the genre’s elementary particles anew in “The Bourne Identity.”

“Casino Royale” doesn’t play as dirty as the Bourne films, but the whole thing moves far lower to the ground than any of the newer Bond flicks. Here what pops off the screen aren’t the exploding orange fireballs that have long been a staple of the Bond films and have been taken to new pyrotechnic levels by Hollywood producers like Jerry Bruckheimer, but some sensational stunt work and a core seriousness. Successful franchises are always serious business, yet this is the first Bond film in a long while that feels as if it were made by people who realize they have to fight for audiences’ attention, not just bank on it. You see Mr. Craig sweating (and very nice sweat it is too); you sense the filmmakers doing the same.

The characteristically tangled shenanigans — as if it mattered — involve a villainous free agent named Le Chiffre (the excellent Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen), who wheels and deals using money temporarily borrowed from his equally venal clients. It’s the sort of risky global business that allows the story to jump from the Bahamas to Montenegro and other stops in between as Bond jumps from plot point to plot point, occasionally taking time out to talk into his cellphone or bed another man’s wife. Mr. Craig, whose previous credits include “Munich” and “The Mother,” walks the walk and talks the talk, and he keeps the film going even during the interminable high-stakes card game that nearly shuts it down.

If Mr. Campbell and his team haven’t reinvented the Bond film with this 21st edition, they have shaken (and stirred) it a little, chipping away some of the ritualized gentility that turned it into a waxworks. They have also surrounded Mr. Craig with estimable supporting players, including the French actress Eva Green, whose talent is actually larger than her breasts.

Like Mr. Mikkelsen, who makes weeping blood into a fine spectator sport, Ms. Green brings conviction to the film, as do Jeffrey Wright and Isaach de Bankolé. Judi Dench is back as M, of course, with her stiff lip and cunning. But even she can’t steal the show from Mr. Craig, though a human projectile by the name of Sébastien Foucan, who leads a merry and thrilling chase across Madagascar, almost does.

An Agent Of Change
With 'Casino Royale,' Blond Bond Hits the Ground Running

By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 17, 2006; C01

Nobody does it tougher.

Reinventing James Bond as a kind of Navy SEAL with an attitude problem, "Casino Royale" turns out to be cracking good entertainment, as well as a fresh start for the perdurable 21-picture franchise.

Daniel Craig kicks major maximus as a Bond who'd never use a computer where a punch will do; he's lean and athletic and fast, and the movie takes great advantage of his beauty in motion, particularly his on-the-dead-run. Besides being the first blond Bond, the first Bond under 40 since George Lazenby, and the first Bond to look like Steve McQueen, he's seemingly the first Bond to actually bleed. His face frequently looks like it had a close encounter with a lawnmower; fights leave him sodden in unpleasant liquids of his own manufacture as well as physically spent and far into oxygen debt.

That stands in direct counterpoint to the majority of post-Connery Bonds, especially Roger Moore but also toward the end Pierce Brosnan, who always seemed such lightweights that you suspected all that hair spray had soaked into their brains and turned them into fashion models. Hmmm, you mow down 400 Russian border guards with your trusty AK-47 and you don't even muss your mane?

That hair symbolized everything that was wrong with late-issue Bonds: Beyond their unbelievability, they stood for a figure completely unrooted in any sort of reality. The movies had become almost decadent in their removal of Bond from the physical world: He was a kind of male fantasy conceit grown stale and prissy, sited amid big, dull special effects that were always right up to last year's standards.

Director Martin Campbell's version astutely restores Bond to a real world -- note I say, a real world, not the real world. This movie is set, say, one remove from the possible, instead of, like those last few, 20 or so removes. Thus, this Bond fights and bleeds and can be tortured, but his pain endurance is a fantasy, as is his recovery time. He moves like a running back on sinews of steel -- fast, evasive, believable -- but he makes a few inter-building leaps that ignore the rude physics of gravity. He shoots well (much gun stuff), but it would have been nicer if he missed once in a while. Just once in a while.

Yet the movie also has a number of extremely shocking moments -- shocking, that is, in their tenderness, their tragedy, their human dimension. The scenes between the cool Craig and Iron Mistress M (the brilliant Judi Dench) really crackle with hostility; did Edward Albee fly in for secret rewrites? There's a moment where a young British agent is first exposed to the incredible violence of the world she's elected to enter, and she collapses in her clothes in the shower. Gently, Bond goes and holds her, not because he's on the make but because he loves her and knows she's in pain. Later there's a drowning death that has a tragic, nightmarish quality, a so-close-yet-so-far sensibility that will haunt you just as it haunts Bond.

Maybe these human moments exist because the film is derived from Ian Fleming's first 007 novel, published way back in 1952. It is said by many to be the most "realistic" of his books, the one in which he was a real novelist as opposed to the later ones where he was sticking to his highly profitable formula. Regardless, they do make this Bond slightly human; you care about him, as the movie -- essentially a kind of origins piece even though it's set in 2006 -- watches the new 00-level promotee find his place in the world, his style, his voice and possibly even his pathologies. "You're not much on empathy, are you, Bond?" notes the acidic M. Craig makes you believe in a supremely confident physical animal, more athlete, really, than agent, who ultimately turns into a seasoned, dependable professional -- without, by the way, saving the world.

The plot, in fact, is short on saving the world, as it is on magic gizmo boxes (okay, a big airplane is saved by attaching a magic gizmo box to the terrorist trying to blow it up; but on the other hand, a Venetian palazzo sinks into the canals, so in a cost-benefit analysis, it probably comes out the same).

Now, about that plot. Hmmm, wish I could explain it to you, but first I'd have to explain it to myself. It makes some sense, though a number of the connections were made so fast you more or less have to take them on faith.

Now, as a man who isn't sure if two of a kind beats a queen and a jack, I can say I had some problems following the intense card-playing sequences. The millions of poker fans out there won't, and I'm guessing they'll see the movie six or more times. During this period, it should be added, numerous other things are going on: Bond falls in love with British agent Vesper Lynd (Eva Green, fabulous, beautiful and intelligent), has a heart attack (induced by drugs) and has a machete fight with two African assassins. Still to come are a car chase, a torture sequence (tough, but it gives the director another chance to rip Craig's shirt off), that sinking palazzo, as well as a final shootout.

Half an hour too long (it drags when Bond and Vesper go off on a lark) and with a few too many villains we really can't place in the plot, "Casino Royale" nevertheless proves that you seldom go wrong if you make a movie that leaves you stirred, not shaken.

Art is big business now

Landmark De Kooning Crowns Collection

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: November 18, 2006

As records were being broken at contemporary art auctions this week, the hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen privately scooped up a de Kooning “Woman” painting for roughly $137.5 million, adding to the prestige of a personal collection that is fast becoming one of the world’s greatest.

Mr. Cohen bought the 1952-53 oil on canvas, “Woman III,” directly from the entertainment magnate and megacollector David Geffen, who in the last two months has emerged as equally prolific in selling his contemporary masterpieces.

It is the last painting in de Kooning’s “Women” series still in private hands. “This is arguably the most important postwar painting that is not in a museum,” Sandy Heller, an art adviser to Mr. Cohen, said yesterday. “We were in the right place at the right time. It’s our good fortune.”

Mr. Cohen, 50, has amassed a vast collection over the last six years that ranges from a Manet self-portrait to one of Jackson Pollock’s classic drip paintings to Damien Hirst’s infamous shark submerged in a tank of formaldehyde. Only last month he purchased a different de Kooning from Mr. Geffen, a 1955 landscape titled “Police Gazette,” for $63.5 million.

Mr. Geffen, who has been collecting art for decades, is known to have raised about $421 million in four private art sales since the beginning of October. The rapid-fire deals have fueled speculation that he is considering a bid for The Los Angeles Times.

Reached by telephone yesterday, Mr. Geffen declined to make any comment.

In October he sold Jasper Johns’s “False Start” (1959) to Kenneth C. Griffin, managing director and chief executive of the Chicago-based Citadel Investment Group, for $80 million. More recently he sold Jackson Pollock’s “No. 5, 1948” for $140 million to the financier David Martinez, experts familiar with the transaction have reported. (Last week Mr. Martinez denied through his law firm, Shearman & Sterling, that he had bought the painting, but art world experts have repeatedly reaffirmed that he was the buyer.)

Mr. Heller said the price tag for “Woman III” was $137.5 million and that the sale was brokered by the Manhattan dealer Larry Gagosian. It is unclear whether that price included Mr. Gagosian’s commission. If a commission were still to be added to that figure, “Woman III” could possibly have fetched the highest price on record for a painting. The current known record was set this month when Mr. Geffen sold the Pollock for $140 million.

The female figure was a theme to which de Kooning returned repeatedly. He began painting women regularly in the early 1940s and did so again later in that decade and more seriously in the 1950s. Often they are depicted in an almost graffitilike style, with gigantic, vacuous eyes, massive breasts, toothy smiles and clawlike hands set against colorful layers of paint.

“Woman III,” measuring 68 by 48½ inches, is one of six “Woman” paintings he numbered. The other five are all in world-class museums, all but one in the United States.

“Woman III” comes with a rich history. Mr. Geffen acquired it in 1994 from a Tehran museum in a quiet trade with the help of Doris Ammann, a Zurich dealer, on the tarmac of the Vienna airport. In return, Iran obtained the remnants of a precious 16th-century painted manuscript detailing the ascension of Shah Tahmasp of Persia to the throne.

Because Mr. Cohen is known as a supporter of both the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum, his purchase is likely to stir speculation about whether “Woman III” will one day go to a museum.

“Steve is a young man; he just recently celebrated his 50 birthday,” Mr. Heller said. “So it’s bit early to say. He has not made any ultimate decision on the fate of his collection.”

Pride and Vanity quotes

"Big egos are big shields for lots of empty space." — Diana Black

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.” — C.S. Lewis, 20th-century British novelist and scholar

"Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.... They do not mean to do harm.... They are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." — T.S. Eliot, Nobel Prize-winning 20th-century Anglo-American poet

"When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity." — Dale Carnegie, 20th-century American motivational writer

"Nothing is so commonplace as to wish to be remarkable." — Unknown

“If you let your head get too big, it'll break your neck.”' — Elvis Presley, American rock 'n' roll icon (1935-1977)

"A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular." — Adlai Stevenson II, 20th-century American politician, presidential candidate

"When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." — Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), 19th-century American humorist, author and journalist

“I value solid popularity — the esteem of good men for good action. I despise the bubble popularity that is won without merit and lost without crime.” — Thomas Hart Benton, 18th/19th-century American writer and U.S. senator from Missouri

“He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.” — Benjamin Franklin, 18th-century American Founding Father, inventor and statesman

“When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.” — H. L. Mencken, 20th-century American journalist and humorist

"Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory." — Joseph Conrad, 19th/20th-century Nobel Prize-winning Polish-English author

“No man is a hero to his valet.” — Mme. Cornuel, 17th-century Parisian hostess

Blame is a waste of time

"All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much blame you place, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty of something, but you won't succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy." — Dr. Wayne Dyer, author (Your Erroneous Zones)

The cardinal rules of email etiquette

• NEVER TYPE IN ALL CAPS. THAT’S LIKE SCREAMING. REALLY!
• Be wary of any kind of attachment - even if it comes from someone you know.
• If a file you wish to send is larger than 2MB, think twice before sending it.
• HTML stationery is annoying; if you don’t need to use it, don’t.
• Use BCC instead of CC to keep other email addresses private.
• Don’t delete relevant information when you reply to someone.
• If you can’t spell well, rememmber to run a spell check before sending.
• Try to keep your messages as short as possible - you’re not writing a novel.
• Never send emails when you’re mad - wait until you calm down first. Trust me.
• Triple-check that you’re not sending a message to someone who shouldn’t see it.
• Remember that when you send something electronically, it has the potential of “living” forever.
• Before you forward an email joke, make sure it’s funny first. Please?

Optimism Quotes

Optimism - Wikiquote

La Rochefoucauld - some quotes

Quotes from the Maxims

• "Fights would not last if one side only were wrong."

• "Our virtues are usually just disguised vices."

• "What we call virtues are often just a collection of casual actions and selfish interests which chance or our own industry manages to arrange [in a certain way]. It is not always from valor that men are valiant, or from chastity that women are chaste."

• "The passions are the most effective orators for persuading. They are a natural art that have infallible rules; and the simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without it."

• "If we had no faults, we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others."

• "A man often believes he is leading when he is [actually being] led; while his mind seeks one goal, his heart unknowingly drags him towards another."

• "Those who know their minds do not necessarily know their hearts."

• "Sincerity is an openness of heart that is found in very few people. What we usually see is only an artful disguise people put on to win the confidence of others."

• "When not prompted by vanity, we say little."

• "The refusal of praise is actually the wish to be praised twice."

• "In all aspects of life, we take on a part and an appearance to seem to be what we wish to be [seen as]--and thus the world is merely composed of actors."

• "We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine."

• "No one deserves to be asked to lend their goodness, if he doesn't have the power to be bad."

• We always love those who admire us; we do not always love those whom we admire.

• Our actions are like the terminations of verses, which we rhyme as we please.

• Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.

• The height of ability consists in a thorough knowledge of the real value of things, and of the genius of the age in which we live.

• To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.

Killer

JFK - the moon speech

We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone and one which we intend to win!


Excellent, really!

New Planet Definition Enlarges Solar System

Being a planet used to be an old boys club with 8 or 9 members. It ain't so anymore.

The new proposed definition of a planet is: a celestial body with sufficient mass to assume a nearly spherical shape that orbits a star without being another star or a satellite of another planet. By this definition, the list of planets in order from the sun now reads: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto-Charon (considered a double-planet system) and the newly discovered and officially unnamed 2003 UB₃₁₃, otherwise known as Xena

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: New Planet Definition Enlarges Solar System

Top Ten Signs You Bought A Bad Computer

Letterman's Top Ten
Top Ten Signs You Bought A Bad Computer

10.Runs on 200 "D" batteries. 9.In the morning you have to defrost it. 8.Runs on Windows '78 7.Box reads "Pre-loaded with hundreds of viruses!" 6. Tech support number is a Silicon Valley Applebee's. 5. For better internet reception, salesman includes pair of rabbit ears. 4. You move the pointer around by licking the screen. 3. It's made by IBN. 2. The mouse bit you. 1. When you tell it to print, it tells you to go screw yourself.

The seven ways that people search the Web.

The seven ways that people search the Web. By Paul Boutin - Slate Magazine

Snakes

I come from an environment where if yoy see a snake, you kill it. Here [at GM], if you see a snake you hire a consultant.

Ross Perrot

Seth's Blog: Advice for authors

With more than 75,000 books published every year (not counting ebooks or blogs), the odds are actually pretty good that you've either written a book, are writing a book or want to write one.

Hence this short list:

1. Lower your expectations. The happiest authors are the ones that don't expect much.
2. The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you'll need later.
3. Pay for an eidtor editor. Not just to fix the typos, but to actually make your ramblings into something that people will choose to read. I found someone I like working with at the EFA. One of the things traditional publishers used to do is provide really insightful, even brilliant editors (people like Fred Hills and Megan Casey), but alas, that doesn't happen very often. And hiring your own editor means you'll value the process more.
4. Understand that a non-fiction book is a souvenir, just a vessel for the ideas themselves. You don't want the ideas to get stuck in the book... you want them to spread. Which means that you shouldn't hoard the idea! The more you give away, the better you will do.
5. Don't try to sell your book to everyone. First, consider this: ' 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.' Then, consider the fact that among people even willing to buy a book, yours is just a tiny little needle in a very big haystack. Far better to obsess about a little subset of the market--that subset that you have permission to talk with, that subset where you have credibility, and most important, that subset where people just can't live without your b"

Bryan Tracy - Quotes

• I've found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.
• You have to put in many, many, many tiny efforts that nobody sees or appreciates before you achieve anything worthwhile.
• Perhaps the very best question that you can memorize and repeat, over and over, is, “what is the most valuable use of my time right now?”
• A major stimulant to creative thinking is focused questions. There is something about a well-worded question that often penetrates to the heart of the matter and triggers new ideas and insights.
• Practice Golden-Rule 1 of Management in everything you do. Manage others the way you would like to be managed.
• A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.
• People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.
• If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals, then it's moving you away from your goals.

7 rules to ask questions

from Seth Gobin;s blog:

John Sawatsky of ESPN knows how to ask questions, and he thinks you don't.

You need to ask questions every time you interact with a consumer, a job applicant, a co-worker with a great idea or even someone sitting next to you during an interminable wait for the airplane.

I found John's seven rules in a search cache. Here's a summary of what doesn't work:

1. Asking a question with no query

Examples: "Your neighbors don't like you." "Some people think you killed your wife."

2. Double-barrelled questions

Like: "Is this your first business? How did you get started?" You're unlikely to get answers to both. One question at a time.

3. Overloading

Ask: short, simple questions. "What is it like to be accused of murder?"

4. Adding your own remarks

Again, this is not the time or place to say that you hate Chryslers... You're not being interviewed.

5. Trigger words

One famous example of this was when TV reporter John Stossell asked a pro wrestler about the "sport'' by volunteering this about the fighting: "I think it's fake." The pro wrestler hit him--twice. "Was that fake?" he demanded...

6. Hyperbole by the questioner

Overstatement typically causes the interview subject to counterbalance by understating...

7. Closed query (Yes or No question)

If the question begins with a verb, its most likely a closed question -- and will generate a one word answer.

The top 10 worst company URL

The top 10 unintentionally worst company URL
Everyone knows that if you are going to operate a business in today’s
world you need a domain name. It is advisable to look at the domain name
selected as other see it and not just as you think it looks. Failure to do
this may result in situations such as the following (legitimate) companies
who deal in everyday humdrum products and services but clearly didn’t give
their domain names enough consideration:

1. A site called ‘Who Represents’ where you can find the name of the agent
that represents a celebrity. Their domain name… wait for it… is
www.whorepresents.com

2. Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange
advice and views at
www.expertsexchange.com

3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at
www.penisland.net

4. Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at
www.therapistfinder.com

5. Then of course, there’s the Italian Power Generator company…
www.powergenitalia.com

6. And now, we have the Mole Station Native Nursery, based in New South
Wales:
www.molestationnursery.com

7. If you’re looking for computer software, there’s always
www.ipanywhere.com

8. Welcome to the First Cumming Methodist Church. Their website is
www.cummingfirst.com

9. Then, of course, there’s these brainless art designers, and their
whacky website:
www.speedofart.com

10. Want to holiday in Lake Tahoe? Try their brochure website at
www.gotahoe.com

100 Best Novels

Here is a the list of the best 100 modern novels

The Modern Library | 100 Best | Novels

Constructive Performance feedback

Follow these six steps when providing constructive performance feedback

From TechRepublic

The purpose of performance feedback is to let team members know how they are doing and whether they are meeting your performance expectations. Performance feedback doesn't just mean telling people when they do something wrong. You want to make sure that you recognize when team members meet their commitments or do something great, as well as when they are not meeting your expectations.

In fact, telling people they are doing a good job is easy. You can recognize them with a simple thank-you. You can write them a nice e-mail or a memo. You can also praise a team member in front of others so that the feedback gets the added benefit of broader recognition.

On the other hand, when team members don't meet your expectations you should also provide performance feedback. It would usually not be appropriate to do this in front of others, or copy others into the feedback. Constructive performance feedback is typically better handled though a one-on-one meeting. When this type of conversation is appropriate, you can use the following steps.

• Plan. This helps you develop a framework for providing effective feedback. You should think ahead of time about the behavior that should be highlighted and how you can help the employee improve.
• Provide examples. Vague criticism fosters anxiety. Tangible examples are required to highlight the feedback. You do not need to provide dozens of examples. Hopefully, you can make the point with a couple representative observations. If you don't have examples, you cannot provide the feedback.
• Motivate. Use motivational techniques in the discussion. The employee is bound to be disappointed by the feedback. Look for opportunities to build the morale of the team member as well, so that he or she will be eager to improve.
• Sandwich. The project manager should start the session with positive comments, then get to the feedback and finish with positive, motivating comments. Many people think this is trite and perhaps obvious. However, it is still a valid way to proceed. If you can find some positive things to say, open and close the discussion by mentioning them.
• Allow time for feedback. The process needs to be a dialogue between the project manager and the team member. So, seek feedback from the team member and allow him or her to agree, disagree or provide his/her perspective. It is possible that he or she may have mitigating factors that you were not previously aware of.
• Set a timeframe for action and follow-up. The manager should document any action items, circulate them to the team member and ensure that they are completed. Before the meeting is over, the project manager and team member should also agree on a follow-up timeframe to check progress.

This type of discussion would be very appropriate for a manager to have with a team member. If this type of feedback does not change the person's behavior, you can have a second, similar discussion. However, ultimately if there are performance problems that cannot be corrected, the situation will need to be brought to the attention of the functional manager.

It is between you and God

Handwritten sign found on the wall of Mother Teresa's room:

• People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; forgive then
• anyway.
• If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind
• anyway.
• If you are successful, you will win some false friends, and some true enemies;
• be successful anyway.
• If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank
• anyway.
• What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build
• anyway.
• If you find serenity and happiness, others may be jealous; be happy anyway.
• The good you do today, people will forget tomorrow; do good anyway.
• Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; give your best
• anyway.
• For you see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

10 Negotiation tips

1. Indifference (show you are not really so much interested in…)
2. Scarcity ("this is one of the few" or "the last...")
3. Authority ("...[someone important] said this is the best…")
4. Courage (appearing willing to take risks)
5. Commitment ( to the success of the negotiation)
6. Expertise
7. Knowledge (of the needs of the other part)
8. Empathy
9. Reward & punishing (they must feel that you can hurt them)
10. Investment of time and money

From Bryan Tracy

How to Make a Crop Circle - WikiHow

Crop circles (a generic term for the phenomenon of flattened plants) form in many areas of the world, with visual effects ranging from irregular shapes to amazing geometric patterns. The source of their formation is surrounded by controversy (see How to Explain Crop Circles), but there are some crop circles out there that have definitely been made by people. If you've ever wanted to explore making crop circles as a skill and an art form, here's how!



How to Make a Crop Circle - WikiHow

40 reasons why England won the Wold Cup (in 1966) - edit

1 England's manager was English. Alf Ramsey came from Dagenham, where his father was a hay and straw dealer.

2 There was no nonsense about WAGs. The wives and girlfriends of the squad were not even invited to the celebratory dinner.

3 We lost the cup before we won it. The Jules Rimet trophy was stolen from an exhibition at Westminster Hall, but recovered from under a bush by a mongrel named Pickles.

4 Substitutes were not allowed, and the English players were fitter than the Germans. Alan Ball was still running like a small red train in extra time.

5 Alf Ramsey had no time for FA secretaries or Swedish former weather girls.

6 The whole concept of managerial freedom was fresh. Ramsey's predecessor, Walter Winterbottom, had to do his best with a team selected by a committee.

7 England's squad had sensible names, like Bobby, Jack, Geoff, Gordon and, er, Norbert. There were no Rios or Theos.

8 England enjoyed home advantage, and were accused of exploiting it: they played every single match at Wembley, whereas other teams had to travel. England are bidding for the World Cup of 2018.

9 As in 2006, England had problems in the striker department. Jimmy Greaves, the obvious choice, was injured in the match against France. Enter, in the Peter Crouch role, Geoff Hurst.

10 London was the world capital of cool. The Beatles released Eleanor Rigby and Yellow Submarine. London was home to Michael Caine in Alfie and David Hemmings in Blow Up. Can you name one decent German song or film from 1966?

11 Players' wages were under control: for the World Cup, the England squad received £60 a match, and shared an eventual bonus pool worth £1,000 a man.

12 British pluck was much in evidence. During the World Cup year, Sheila Scott circumnavigated the globe in a single-engined plane. Meanwhile, Chay Blyth and John Ridgway rowed the Atlantic.

13 The England players did not stay in a five-star hotel: their base was Hendon Hall, in north London, smart but not lavish.

14 There were no paparazzi, and no limos. In their spare time, the players hopped on the bus to a local golf course, or went for a cup of tea in unglamorous Golders Green. No one pursued them.

15 The England players had faith: Nobby Stiles, the short-sighted, toothless midfield stopper, went to church on the morning of the final.

16 A Labour government were in power, headed by a devious self-publicist who was quick to take the credit for the nation's sporting achievements. No change there, then.

17 The Dunkirk spirit was still alive in the land. According to a German television commentator, Werner Schneider: "It is said that the Germans are the most militaristic people, but this is not so. The British are. Even winning at football is treated like winning a battle."

18 None of the England squad were married to, or even walking out with, a pop star. Admittedly, Billy Wright had married one of the Beverley Sisters, but he was out of the picture in 1966.

19 None of the England players sported a silly hairdo, unless you count Bobby Charlton's comb-over.

20 No England player was involved in pretentious or fate-tempting advertising campaigns. Promotional work was resolutely down-to-earth, for example, Bobby Moore's commercial encouraging people to "drop in to your local".

21 Metatarsals had not been invented in 1966, therefore no English players broke them.

22 The opposition were generally poor. North Korea, for goodness' sake, were quarter-finalists.

23 The 'Russian linesman' was on our side. Tofik Bakhramov, actually from Azerbaijan, awarded Geoff Hurst's second goal in the 11th minute of extra time. Bakhramov had no common language with the Swiss referee, Gottfried Dienst, but he still managed to persuade his colleague that Hurst's shot had crossed the line when it bounced down off the crossbar.

24 England were also lucky that their fourth goal was not disallowed since, as Kenneth Wolstenholme famously noted, "some people are on the pitch".

25 Wembley was vast, and hugely noisy: 97,000 people attended the final, most of them English. The German fans were drowned out by the home supporters.

26 England had the best goalkeeper in the tournament. Gordon Banks was approaching his prime, and was the main reason that England completed the group section without conceding a goal.

27 The 1966 England team were capable of defeating Portugal in the latter stages of a major competition (2-1 in the semi-finals), a feat that seems beyond their contemporary counterparts.

28 England had been slagged off by the pundits. "England will not win the World Cup," Jimmy Hill predicted. "But don't blame Alf. No one could win with this lot."

29 Brazil were not a major factor at the 1966 World Cup. Their squad were elderly, with the exception of Pele, who was treated with horrible violence by opponents.

30 England's manager played politics very well. Fifa wanted Nobby Stiles kicked out of the tournament after a particularly horrible tackle in the match against France. But Ramsey stood by his man.

31 England's manager was a man of principle (compare 2006). After a nasty game against Argentina, Ramsey refused to let his players swap shirts with the South Americans.

32 None of the 1966 squad had agents. Or personal assistants.

33 England had James Bond on our side. Before the semi-final against Portugal, the England players toured Pinewood Studios, where Sean Connery was playing 007. The Scot greeted them with good grace.

34 England's 1966 squad did not include a 17-year-old striker who had never played a senior game for his club.

35 During extra time in the final, England's players kept their socks up. The Germans didn't, a fact noted by Ramsey in his pep talk to the team after 90 minutes.

36 Had England lost the final, they would still have kept the cup. The FA had a copy made when the orginal was stolen: it is still in the National Football Museum.

37 In 1966 the players did not conform to fancy diets or take vitamin supplements. The pre-final lunch was chicken.

38 England's players were not distracted by vast wealth or fast cars. Most of the squad earned about £100 a week, and George Cohen was inordinately proud of his Vauxhall Viva.

39 England's supporters were encouraged by the first ever World Cup mascot, a lion called World Cup Willie. The name might apply equally well to the manager of England's 2006 campaign.

40 England's captain, Bobby Moore, did not sport jewellery or tattoos. Nor did he name his son after a district of New York City.

The Expert Mind

"I see only one move ahead," [chess grandmaster] Capablanca is said to have answered, "but it is always the correct one." He thus put in a nutshell what a century of psychological research has subsequently established: much of the chess master's advantage over the novice derives from the first few seconds of thought.

Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well. A acientific American article.

Scientific American: The Expert Mind

Θανάσιμα αμαρτήματα

Τα 7 θανάσιμα αμαρτήματα, σύμφωνα με τον Γκάντι:

• Πλουτισμός χωρίς εργασία
• Διασκέδαση χωρίς μέτρο
• Γνώση χωρίς χαρακτήρα
• Εμπόριο χωρίς ηθική
• Επιστήμη χωρίς ανθρωπιά
• Πίστη χωρίς θυσία
• Πολιτική χωρίς αρχές

a perfect woman

My perfect woman:

She was feminine, expensive, sexy, cool yet definitely available given the right conditions and the money

Helmut Newton

Overachievers don't write

Overachievers don't write

Whitney Otto

SATURDAY, MAY 13, 2006

PORTLAND, Oregon The beach book, the novel that we take with us on a languorous summer vacation, when we demand that reading be a pleasure and not a chore, the one "serious" readers apologize for even though they shouldn't, is known more formally as genre fiction. The thing that makes genre fiction so appealing is the same thing that can make it such a bore: It's predictable. If the recent rash of novels classified as chick lit were laid end to end, you would have the literary equivalent of a tract-house development.

Sure, some of the houses are beige and others are cream, but they all have the same two-car garage and marble counters in the kitchen. That's why people buy them. That's why Alloy, the book-packaging company that helped Kaavya Viswanathan with "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" - portions of which, Viswanathan later admitted, had been copied from other books - specializes in chick lit, the latest incarnation of the romance genre.

I doubt that I'm the first to notice the glaring similarities between romances and chick lit, but in the spirit of recent events, let's say that I am. This is because the pleasure of the predictable romance novel (or chick lit) is the knowledge that a bookish girl can win. A good romance/chick-lit book is about discovery and appreciation. A chick-lit novel tells the reader that humor, imperfect looks and quick wit are desirable even if the world seems to tell the bookish girl otherwise.

And who else would be reading a novel but a bookish girl? Viswanathan is a bookish girl who might have had more success at fiction if she didn't bear the burden of the overachiever. Overachievers don't generally become writers because the skill set is so different. If you want to be a writer, work on the finer points of gossip, eavesdropping and voyeurism; basically the pastimes of the underachiever. If you care to add smoking, drinking and carousing to your repertoire, you wouldn't be the first .

It seems that the first person to see Viswanathan's darker, unfinished novel was her college admissions consultant, someone who, for a nice chunk of change, will get you into that Ivy League college of your choice. The book went on to Alloy, which transformed it into the young-adult chick- lit "Opal Mehta," which borrowed heavily from Megan McCafferty, Sophie Kinsella, Meg Cabot and my favorite, Salman Rushdie, whose name is so often linked with the first three writers.

The mystery of the "Opal Mehta" affair is why would you succumb to the pressure to produce yet another chick lit by-the-numbers book unless you were more motivated by being a writer than actually writing. Viswanathan's collaboration with Alloy would be more understandable if she had been kicking around the publishing scene for a spell, and got really drunk (see above). This is a way of saying that it isn't surprising that a faux writer might want to write a kind of faux novel.

At its best, genre writing can transcend its given genre. Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett wrote crime classics that often threw an unwelcome light on the ways a person will treat another person given the right circumstances. And Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" blew the bodice off almost all other romance novels. But if you aren't compelled to write, because you're maybe an overachieving future investment banker, then a paint-by-number approach might be the way to go, bookwise.

It would take an underachieving, gossipy, voyeuristic, bit of a slacker to write a genre novel capable of pulling away from the pack. In the writing life you can't avoid failure. Or, to put it another way, someone who is driven to write is usually not the same sort of person who would work with an expensive college counselor.

That's a little like expecting a claustrophobe to take up a career in a coal mine. And you can't trade on your youth because being young isn't enough to even know your own story, let alone tell it. Some of the best books ever written about youth are by writers long past those dewy days.

At 68, I'm every age I ever was. I always think that I'm not just 68. I'm also 55 and 21 and 3. Oh, especially 3. George Carlin said that but since I'm in such strong agreement, I might as well have said it.

One could say that a chick-lit book comes with such specific requirements to be considered chick lit that enormous similarities to previous books within the genre are almost inevitable. Or you could just write your own book.

PORTLAND, Oregon The beach book, the novel that we take with us on a languorous summer vacation, when we demand that reading be a pleasure and not a chore, the one "serious" readers apologize for even though they shouldn't, is known more formally as genre fiction. The thing that makes genre fiction so appealing is the same thing that can make it such a bore: It's predictable. If the recent rash of novels classified as chick lit were laid end to end, you would have the literary equivalent of a tract-house development.

Sure, some of the houses are beige and others are cream, but they all have the same two-car garage and marble counters in the kitchen. That's why people buy them. That's why Alloy, the book-packaging company that helped Kaavya Viswanathan with "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" - portions of which, Viswanathan later admitted, had been copied from other books - specializes in chick lit, the latest incarnation of the romance genre.

I doubt that I'm the first to notice the glaring similarities between romances and chick lit, but in the spirit of recent events, let's say that I am. This is because the pleasure of the predictable romance novel (or chick lit) is the knowledge that a bookish girl can win. A good romance/chick-lit book is about discovery and appreciation. A chick-lit novel tells the reader that humor, imperfect looks and quick wit are desirable even if the world seems to tell the bookish girl otherwise.

And who else would be reading a novel but a bookish girl? Viswanathan is a bookish girl who might have had more success at fiction if she didn't bear the burden of the overachiever. Overachievers don't generally become writers because the skill set is so different. If you want to be a writer, work on the finer points of gossip, eavesdropping and voyeurism; basically the pastimes of the underachiever. If you care to add smoking, drinking and carousing to your repertoire, you wouldn't be the first .

It seems that the first person to see Viswanathan's darker, unfinished novel was her college admissions consultant, someone who, for a nice chunk of change, will get you into that Ivy League college of your choice. The book went on to Alloy, which transformed it into the young-adult chick- lit "Opal Mehta," which borrowed heavily from Megan McCafferty, Sophie Kinsella, Meg Cabot and my favorite, Salman Rushdie, whose name is so often linked with the first three writers.

The mystery of the "Opal Mehta" affair is why would you succumb to the pressure to produce yet another chick lit by-the-numbers book unless you were more motivated by being a writer than actually writing. Viswanathan's collaboration with Alloy would be more understandable if she had been kicking around the publishing scene for a spell, and got really drunk (see above). This is a way of saying that it isn't surprising that a faux writer might want to write a kind of faux novel.

At its best, genre writing can transcend its given genre. Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett wrote crime classics that often threw an unwelcome light on the ways a person will treat another person given the right circumstances. And Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" blew the bodice off almost all other romance novels. But if you aren't compelled to write, because you're maybe an overachieving future investment banker, then a paint-by-number approach might be the way to go, bookwise.

It would take an underachieving, gossipy, voyeuristic, bit of a slacker to write a genre novel capable of pulling away from the pack. In the writing life you can't avoid failure. Or, to put it another way, someone who is driven to write is usually not the same sort of person who would work with an expensive college counselor.

That's a little like expecting a claustrophobe to take up a career in a coal mine. And you can't trade on your youth because being young isn't enough to even know your own story, let alone tell it. Some of the best books ever written about youth are by writers long past those dewy days.

At 68, I'm every age I ever was. I always think that I'm not just 68. I'm also 55 and 21 and 3. Oh, especially 3. George Carlin said that but since I'm in such strong agreement, I might as well have said it.

One could say that a chick-lit book comes with such specific requirements to be considered chick lit that enormous similarities to previous books within the genre are almost inevitable. Or you could just write your own book.

Europe's future

Calling in sick

Cracking under pressure

Here is an old article from New York Times. I think it's interesting and usefull

Cracking Under the Pressure? It's Just the Opposite, for Some

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR

Published: September 10, 2004

For Michael Jones, an architect at a top-tier firm in New York, juggling multiple projects and running on four hours of sleep is business as usual. Mr. Jones has adjusted, he says, to a rapid pace and the constant pressure that leads his colleagues to "blow up" from time to time.

A design project can drag on for more than a year, often requiring six-day workweeks and painstaking effort. At the moment, he said, he is working on four.

But for Mr. Jones, the stress is worth it, if only because every now and then he can gaze at the Manhattan skyline and spot a product of his labor: the soaring profile of the Chatham apartment building on East 65th Street, one of many structures he has helped design in his 14 years at Robert A. M. Stern Architects.

"If I didn't feel like I was part of something important, I wouldn't be able to do this," he said.

Mr. Jones belongs to a rare breed of worker that psychologists have struggled to understand for decades, not for the sheer amount of stress they grapple with day to day, but for the way they flourish under it. They are a familiar but puzzling force in the workplace, perpetually functioning in overdrive to meet a punishing schedule or a demanding boss.

To colleagues, these men and women may seem simply like workaholics. But psychologists who study them call them resilient, or hardy, and say they share certain backgrounds and qualities that enable them to thrive under enormous pressure.

"People who are high in hardiness enjoy ongoing changes and difficulties," said Dr. Salvatore R. Maddi, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of a forthcoming book, "Resilience at Work." "They find themselves more involved in their work when it gets tougher and more complicated. They tend to think of stress as a normal part of life, rather than as something that's unfair.''

Chronic stress has been linked to an array of illnesses, including heart disease and depression. But people who cope successfully, studies have found, punch in at work with normal levels of stress hormones that climb during the day and drop sharply at night. Their coworkers who complain of being too stressed have consistently higher levels of hormones that rarely dip very far, trapping them in a constant state of anxiety.

At the same time, resilient people seem to avoid stress-related health and psychological problems, even as colleagues are falling to pieces, say researchers who have studied strenuous work environments.

"Some of it is genetic, some of it is how you were raised, and some it is just your personality," Dr. Bruce McEwen, director of the neuroendocrinology laboratory at Rockefeller University, said.

People who thrive under pressure do not necessarily seek out particular professions, researchers say. But whether they are on the trading floor or the campaign trail, they all appear to have had early experiences in difficult environments that taught them how to regulate their stress levels. They can sense when they are reaching their breaking point, and they know when to take a walk or turn off the ringer.

In some cases, these people subject themselves to stresses of their own making, driven by an unconscious urge to conquer pressures that dogged them as children or young adults, said Steven Kuchuck, a psychotherapist in New York who treats many patients who seek out demanding jobs and relationships.

"There's this strong desire to go back to similar sources of stress that they grew up with in an effort to master it," Mr. Kuchuck said. "Some people will say 'No, I don't like a lot of stress,' but they find themselves in one stressful job after another, so there must be something that's pulling them."

Mr. Kuchuck has also seen the opposite: people who crave a frenzied career because they feel their childhoods were not stimulating at all.

But regardless of what propels people to push themselves, what allows them to prosper, psychologists say, is a strong commitment to their career, a feeling of being in control, and a tendency to view stress as a challenge rather than as a burden.

People's attitudes toward their jobs and the degree to which they feel they make a difference by showing up each day have long been considered powerful indicators of how well they will do. Being just another cog in a machine with no say over what happens is almost guaranteed to cause burnout. But even in the most grueling work environment, people can cope if they feel they have some control.

Studies of professional musicians show that people in orchestras are often less satisfied and more stressed than those in small chamber groups because they lack autonomy, according to Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford and the author of "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers." Orchestra musicians are at the mercy of their maestro's every whim. For years, they had no power even to take regular bathroom breaks.

"The people who are under someone's thumb, who are low-ranking and don't have any decision-making,'' Dr. McEwen said, "these are the people who always experience more anxiety."

People who exhibit hardiness are reluctant to cede control. They are also less likely to feel victimized by their bosses or by unpredictable life circumstances. When there is a crisis at work, they can tough it out because they accept a harsh workload or the occasional pink slip as an unsavory but inevitable part of life, psychologists say.

"They know there'll be different challenges, some you can't even anticipate, yet they train their minds to say these things are expected," said Dr. Robert Brooks, a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School and the author of "The Power of Resilience."

Anticipating troubled waters can decrease vulnerability to stress-induced diseases. In the early 1980's, Dr. Maddi of U.C. Irvine followed hundreds of employees at Illinois Bell when its parent company, AT&T, was facing federal deregulation. More than 10,000 people eventually lost their jobs.

"There was suicide, depression, anxiety disorders, divorces, heart attacks, strokes - all the things that could be attributed to massive stress," Dr. Maddi said.

But while about two-thirds of the workers in Dr. Maddi's sample unraveled, the other third thrived. They survived the incident with their health intact and hung onto their jobs or moved to another company where they quickly climbed up the ranks.

When the researchers went back and reviewed their first set of interviews, they found that many of the people who made it through unscathed had stressful family backgrounds - constant moving, their parents getting divorced - and were more likely to describe change as inevitable.

"Some of the people who cracked had initially taken a job with Bell rather than I.B.M. because they believed it was safe and didn't want any disruption," Dr. Maddi said.

Stress is unavoidable, so bracing for it every now and then is the best way to cope. But people who are on constant alert may be suffering from an anxiety disorder, psychologists say.

Those who collapse under the pressures of the workplace are prone to envision every worst-case scenario, while resilient people think of how a greater workload, for example, might lead to a promotion. In studies, researchers have found that perhaps the only time pessimists thrive is when they become lawyers.

"If you're drawing up a contract, the ability to see every foreseeable danger is something that goes along with pessimism, but it's also what makes a good lawyer," Dr. Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, said. "The problem is, not only are they good at seeing that the roof might collapse on you, they're also good at seeing that their mate might be having an affair, that they're never going to make partner."

But one way to overcome cynicism and exhaustion, said Dr. Andy Morgan, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale, is with a sense of personal accomplishment.

An architect who toils six days a week, regularly burning the midnight oil, like Mr. Jones, can be happy if a glimpse of the Manhattan skyline illustrates the value of his efforts.

"When you feel that you're accomplishing something, it's akin to a sense of control," Dr. Morgan said. "When people start feeling that what they're doing is not meaningful, then they take more sick days, begin looking for another job, and complain of health problems."