INDOCTRINATION

Indoctrination is the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.

Instead of teaching our elementary school students about gender identities, why not teach them about:

• Honesty
• Freedoms
• Free Will
• Openness
• Truth
• Fairness
• Life
• Love

It seems to be rather pointless to teach boys that if they have a penis they can still be a girl or girls that if they have a vagina they can still be a boy...  I mean what the hell does that achieve?  Their minds are young and easily manipulated...  when they become adults they can decide what to do about their penis or vagina...

I don't want a bunch of conservatives making decisions for me nor do I want a bunch of liberals making decisions for me either.  I want to hear both sides of the argument and then I will make up my own frigging mind...

Trying to convince me otherwise is an insult to my intelligence which is probably higher than yours if we want to be honest...

1. A two-party system means we have a 50/50 consensus.  
2. A three-party system means we have a 33&1/3 / 33&1/3 / 33&1/3 consensus which could end up 66&2/3 and 33&1/3
3. A four-party system means we have 25/25/25/25 which could end up:  50/50 or 75/25 (which is close to 66&2/3 to 33&1/3)

But, what amazes me more than anything else is the number of people who do not want to think at all, they just want to live their lives and let someone else do all the thinking for them as long as they get what they want...  

Most Americans just want:

• Homes
• Cars
• Job
• Food
• Children
• Alcohol
• Sports
• Recreation
• Cable
• Cell phones
• Facebook

Biden's Disinformation Board

1984 by George Orwell 
Orwell’s novella is a warning for the human race

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

1984 is a dystopian novella by George Orwell published in 1949, which follows the life of Winston Smith, a low ranking member of ‘the Party’, who is frustrated by the omnipresent eyes of the party, and its ominous ruler Big Brother.


‘Big Brother’ controls every aspect of people’s lives. It has invented the language ‘Newspeak’ in an attempt to completely eliminate political rebellion; created ‘Throughtcrimes’ to stop people even thinking of things considered rebellious. The party controls what people read, speak, say and do with the threat that if they disobey, they will be sent to the dreaded Room 101 as a looming punishment.

Orwell effectively explores the themes of mass media control, government surveillance, totalitarianism and how a dictator can manipulate and control history, thoughts, and lives in such a way that no one can escape it.

The protagonist, Winston Smith, begins a subtle rebellion against the party by keeping a diary of his secret thoughts, which is a deadly thoughtcrime. With his lover Julia, he begins a foreordained fight for freedom and justice, in a world where no one else appears to see, or dislike, the oppression the protagonist opposes.

Perhaps the most powerful, effective and frightening notion of 1984 is that the complete control of an entire nation under a totalitarian state is perfectly possible. If the world fell under the control of one or even multiple dictators, the future could easily become a twisted, cruel world where every movement, word and breath is scrutinised by an omnipotent, omnipresent power that no one can stop, or even oppose without the fear of death.

Orwell’s novella is a warning for the human race. It highlights the importance of resisting mass control and oppression.

Is this the kind of society in which you want to live?  A government that decides FOR YOU what is truth and/or what is not truth (DISINFORMATION)...

Right now, we have free will to decide what is truth and what is not truth and it is our choice to decide if we are right or wrong...  but now, the government wants to take away our free will and decide for us...

Is this something that we really want???

A crooked government could take a lie and make it TRUTH...

For instance.... a government could decide that slavery never happened and if someone says that slavery did happen in America is passing out DISINFORMATION...

Education's BIG Mistake

I have been involved with higher education about 30+ years on a 45 year career... and the main problem that I see is that my students don't know how to think...  they don't know how to drill down on a subject...  they don't have any presentation or communications skills and for the most part write at a 10th grade high school level...

However, if you tell them exactly how you want something done, they will copy your instructions exactly because they know in doing so they will get an "A".  Many of them no only have not retained anything but if you ask them what they retained in the class before this one, they will typically say "nothing" or "I cannot remember".

One day, educators are going to wake up and realize what they have done...

Floating Ice

Backwards in Time

A wild new theory suggests there may be another "anti-universe," running backward in time prior to the Big Bang.  The idea assumes that the early universe was small, hot and dense — and so uniform that time looks symmetric going backward and forward.

If true, the new theory means that dark matter isn't so mysterious; it's just a new flavor of a ghostly particle called a neutrino that can only exist in this kind of universe. And the theory implies there would be no need for a period of "inflation" that rapidly expanded the size of the young cosmos soon after the Big Bang.

If true, then future experiments to hunt for gravitational waves, or to pin down the mass of neutrinos, could answer once and for all whether this mirror anti-universe exists.

Preserving symmetry
Physicists have identified a set of fundamental symmetries in nature. The three most important symmetries are: charge (if you flip the charges of all the particles involved in an interaction to their opposite charge, you'll get the same interaction); parity (if you look at the mirror image of an interaction, you get the same result); and time (if you run an interaction backward in time, it looks the same).

Physical interactions obey most of these symmetries most of the time, which means that there are sometimes violations. But physicists have never observed a violation of a combination of all three symmetries at the same time. If you take every single interaction observed in nature and flip the charges, take the mirror image, and run it backward in time, those interactions behave exactly the same.

This fundamental symmetry is given a name: CPT symmetry, for charge (C), parity (P) and time (T).

In a new paper recently accepted for publication in the journal Annals of Physics, scientists propose extending this combined symmetry. Usually this symmetry only applies to interactions — the forces and fields that make up the physics of the cosmos. But perhaps, if this is such an incredibly important symmetry, it applies to the whole entire universe itself. In other words, this idea extends this symmetry from applying to just the "actors" of the universe (forces and fields) to the "stage" itself, the entire physical object of the universe.

Creating dark matter
We live in an expanding universe. This universe is filled with lots of particles doing lots of interesting things, and the evolution of the universe moves forward in time. If we extend the concept of CPT symmetry to our entire cosmos, then our view of the universe can't be the entire picture.

Instead, there must be more. To preserve the CPT symmetry throughout the cosmos, there must be a mirror-image cosmos that balances out our own. This cosmos would have all opposite charges than we have, be flipped in the mirror, and run backward in time. Our universe is just one of a twin. Taken together, the two universes obey CPT symmetry.

The study researchers next asked what the consequences of such a universe would be.  They found many wonderful things.  READ MORE...

Flowing Grasses

 

One Way Time Travel

Have you ever made a mistake that you wish you could undo? Correcting past mistakes is one of the reasons we find the concept of time travel so fascinating. As often portrayed in science fiction, with a time machine, nothing is permanent anymore – you can always go back and change it. But is time travel really possible in our universe, or is it just science fiction?

Our modern understanding of time and causality comes from general relativity. Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein's theory combines space and time into a single entity – "spacetime" – and provides a remarkably intricate explanation of how they both work, at a level unmatched by any other established theory.

This theory has existed for more than 100 years, and has been experimentally verified to extremely high precision, so physicists are fairly certain it provides an accurate description of the causal structure of our Universe.

For decades, physicists have been trying to use general relativity to figure out if time travel is possible. It turns out that you can write down equations that describe time travel and are fully compatible and consistent with relativity. But physics is not mathematics, and equations are meaningless if they do not correspond to anything in reality.  READ MORE...

White Shark

 

The Space Plane

The X-37B looks like something our of a sci-fi movie. What is the plane’s actual mission? Was it designed to fight a space war against Russia or China? At first glance, you think you are looking at a miniature version of the space shuttle, but the X-37B is an unmanned and autonomous space plane with its own quirks and characteristics. 

The craft is also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle, and it has flown six missions since 2010. At only 29-feet long, the X-37B is just a fraction of the size of the space shuttle. It’s also boosted into space on a rocket, and it lands horizontally like an airplane. Let’s take a look at just why the United States needs such a curious spacecraft.

Most missions and their details are classified. Could it be used to take out enemy satellites? That question has been bandied about by space war analysts. But the U.S. military denies such offensive activities and claims the X-37B is for peaceful purposes as a technology and scientific testbed. 

For example, it could be trying out new tech for spy satellites and other types of orbiting vehicles. The X-37B could also be gathering data on vertical launch mechanisms for flight control and testing other space components.  READ MORE...

Wood Stove

Caucasian Born

 

Fighter Take Off

Einstein's First Wife

A photograph of Mileva Marić and her husband, Albert Einstein in 1912.

While Mileva Marić was married to Albert Einstein, many believe she greatly contributed to his world-changing discoveries — only to be denied credit later on.


In 1896, a young Albert Einstein walked into the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich. The 17-year-old student was beginning a four-year program in the school’s physics and mathematics department. Of the five scholars admitted to the department that year, only one of them — Mileva Marić — was a woman.


Soon, the two young physics students were inseparable. Mileva Marić and Albert Einstein conducted research and wrote papers together, and soon began falling in love. “I’m so lucky to have found you,” Einstein wrote to Marić in a letter, “a creature who is my equal, and who is as strong and independent as I am! I feel alone with everyone else except you.”

But Einstein’s family never approved of Mileva Marić. And when their relationship soured, Einstein turned against his wife, and may have robbed her of crucial credit for her work on “his” groundbreaking discoveries.


Who Was Mileva Marić?

Mileva Marić was born in Serbia in 1875. A bright student from her early years, she quickly moved to the top of hlber class. According to Scientific American, in 1892, Marić became the only woman allowed to attend physics lectures at her Zagreb high school after her father petitioned the Minister of Education for an exemption.

According to her classmates, Marić was a quiet but brilliant student. Later, she became just the fifth woman at the Polytechnic Institute to study physics.  READ MORE...

Top of the World

 

Supersonic Experimental Aircraft

This artist’s concept of NASA’s QueSST jet reflects the airplane’s final configuration following 

years of research and design engineering. The jet was constructed by Lockheed Martin at the 

company’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. Credit: Lockheed Martin.

The X-59, NASA’s quiet supersonic experimental aircraft, has arrived back at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, following several months of critical ground tests in Ft. Worth, Texas.

NASA’s X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology aircraft, or QueSST, is designed to fly faster than the speed of sound without producing a loud, disruptive sonic boom, which is typically heard on the ground below aircraft flying at such speeds. 

Instead, with the X-59, people on the ground will hear nothing more than a quiet sonic thump – if they hear anything at all. The X-59 will fly over communities around the United States to demonstrate this technology, but first, NASA needed to validate the X-plane’s acoustic signature, using a ground recording system.

Ground tests on the X-59 were done to ensure the aircraft’s ability to withstand the loads and stresses of supersonic flight – or flight at speeds faster than Mach 1. The vehicle’s fuel systems were also calibrated and tested at Lockheed Martin’s Ft. Worth facilities. 

With its return to California, the X-59 will undergo further ground tests as it approaches full completion of its development and continues to make progress on its way to first flight.  READ MORE...

Floating

 

Recycling Lithium Batteries

Electric vehicles, power tools, smartwatches—Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere now. However, the materials to make them are finite, and sourcing them has environmental, humanitarian, and economic implications. Recycling is key to addressing those, but a recent study shows most Lithium-ion batteries never get recycled.

Lithium and several other metals that make up these batteries are incredibly valuable. The cost of raw lithium is roughly seven times what you'd pay for the same weight in lead, but unlike lithium batteries, almost all lead-acid batteries get recycled. So there’s something beyond pure economics at play.

It turns out that there are good reasons why lithium battery recycling hasn’t happened yet. But some companies expect to change that, which is a good thing since recycling lithium batteries will be an essential part of the renewable energy transition.
Lead-acid lessons

How extreme is the disparity between lithium and lead batteries? In 2021, the average price of one metric ton of battery-grade lithium carbonate was $17,000 compared to $2,425 for lead North American markets, and raw materials now account for over half of battery cost, according to a 2021 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The imbalance of recycling is counterintuitive in terms of fresh material supply as well. Global sources of lithium amount to 89 million tons, most of which originate in South America, according to a recent United States Geological Survey report. In contrast, the global lead supply at 2 billion tons was 22 times higher than lithium.

Despite the smaller supply of lithium, a study earlier this year in the Journal of the Indian Institute of Science found that less than 1 percent of Lithium-ion batteries get recycled in the US and EU compared to 99 percent of lead-acid batteries, which are most often used in gas vehicles and power grids. According to the study, recycling challenges range from the constantly evolving battery technology to costly shipping of dangerous materials to inadequate government regulation.  READ MORE....

Following Momma

Skateboard Jump

Death Spiraling Moon

Mars' moon Phobos crosses the face of the sun, captured by NASA’s Perseverance rover with its Mastcam-Z camera. The faint black specks to the bottom left are sunspots. 

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI)

NASA’s Perseverance rover has captured the clearest ever footage of a solar eclipse over Mars, and the results are out of this world.

The rover snapped the ethereal video of Mars’ potato-shaped moon, Phobos, moving across the face of the sun on April 2. During the eclipse, Phobos projected its uneven shadow over the Martian surface — appearing almost as though it was the pupil of a gigantic eyeball rolling in its socket.

Perseverance recorded the footage midway through its journey to a river delta on Mars’ 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater, where it will search for evidence of life on the Red Planet. Training its state-of-the-art Mastcam-Z camera on the sky, the rover recorded the misshapen moon’s solar transit with the greatest zoom and at the highest framerate ever.

"I knew it was going to be good, but I didn't expect it to be this amazing," Rachel Howson, a mission operations specialist at Malin Space Science Systems and one of the Mastcam-Z team members who operates the camera, said in a statement.

Phobos, named after the Greek god of fear, is roughly 157 times smaller than Earth's moon and is one of Mars' two natural satellites, alongside the even smaller Deimos (whose name comes from the Greek god of dread).

Scientists believe that the brother moons were once roaming asteroids that were snared into Mars’ orbit by the planet’s gravitational field. The orbits of these captive asteroids are unstable, according to researchers, and scientists predict that in a few tens of millions of years' time Deimos will spin out into space while Phobos will slam into Mars’ surface.  READ MORE...

Transformation

 

Making Skin Cells 30 Years Younger

Stock photo of fibroblasts (skin cells) labeled with fluorescent dyes. 

(Image credit: iStock / Getty Images Plus)

Researchers in the U.K. have developed a way to reverse the aging process in skin cells, turning back the biological clock by about 30 years.


De-aging cells has become increasingly common in the last decade, with researchers reprogramming multiple mouse, rat and human cell types. But never before have cells been de-aged by so many years and still retained their specific type and function.


The method, developed by Diljeet Gill, a postdoctoral candidate at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, and his colleagues, was published April 8 in the journal eLife, and has been dubbed "maturation phase transient reprogramming."


The researchers applied this technique to fibroblasts (a common type of skin cell) from three middle-aged donors — who averaged at about 50 years old — then compared them to younger cells from donors aged 20 to 22. The researchers found that the middle-aged cells were similar to the younger cells, both chemically and genetically. When explored further, the team even noticed that the technique had affected genes related to age-related diseases, like Alzheimer's disease and cataracts.

last
In addition, Gill and his colleagues looked at the behavior of the fibroblasts to determine if they could also act like younger skin cells. When they wounded a layer of the cells, they found that the rejuvenated cells quickly moved to fill the gap — the same way that younger cells behave when healing wounds.


This study is not the first to de-age skin cells. That title goes to Nobel prize winner Shinya Yamanaka, who genetically reprogrammed mouse skin cells and turned them into so-called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, back in 2006. These iPSCs resemble cells in early development, and have the potential to form any cell type in the body.  READ MORE...

Turin, Italy

 

NASA Teleports Physician to Space Station

NASA flight surgeon Dr. Josef Schmid gives a space greeting Oct. 8, 2021, as he is holoported 

on to the International Space Station.  ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet

What's happening  --  A NASA flight surgeon was holoported beyond Earth and shook hands with astronaut Thomas Pesquet

Why it matters  --  "It is a brand new way of human exploration where our human entity is able to travel off the planet," according to NASA flight surgeon, Josef Schmid.

I have a new noun to add to your vocabulary: holoportation. It's an amalgam of "hologram" and "teleportation," and it isn't a niche sci-fi term buried somewhere in Isaac Asimov novels and Star Trek episodes.

In October, NASA used this mind-boggling, futuristic mechanism to bring NASA flight surgeon Dr. Josef Schmid onto the International Space Station while he was safely planted on our planet. No rockets necessary.

Schmid was joined on this transdimensional journey by Fernando De La Pena Llaca, the CEO of AEXA Aerospace, an organization that helped develop the holoportation equipment, and a few other team members.

"It is a brand new way of human exploration where our human entity is able to travel off the planet," Schmid said in a statement earlier in April. "Our physical body is not there, but our human entity absolutely is there."  READ MORE...

Lightbulbs

Bird Shower

 

Starlink and Hawaiian Airlines

Under the terms of the agreement, Hawaiian Airlines will offer SpaceX's high-speed, low-latency broadband internet service to its guests free of charge onboard flights between the islands and the continental U.S, Asia and Oceania. (Hawaiian Airlines)

Under the terms of the agreement, Hawaiian Airlines will become the first major airline to offer Starlink's high-speed, low-latency broadband internet service to its guests free of charge onboard flights between the islands and the continental United States, Asia and Oceania.


Hawaiian Airlines offers approximately 130 daily flights within the Hawaiian Islands, daily nonstop flights between Hawaii and 16 U.S. gateway cities, and service connecting Honolulu and American Samoa, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Tahiti.


Hawaii’s largest and longest-serving carrier will equip its Airbus A330 and A321neo aircraft, as well as an incoming fleet of Boeing 787-9s, with Starlink's service. Hawaiian does not currently plan to deploy Starlink on its Boeing 717 aircraft that operate short flights between the Hawaiian Islands.


Hawaiian and Starlink are in the initial stages of implementation and expect to begin installing the service on select aircraft next year.  READ MORE...

Speaking Out

 

Disney's Prices

An impassioned Guest took to social media to discuss their issues with the Walt Disney World Resort currently.

While some Guests have been able to ignore certain issues while in the Parks, many are starting to feel frustrated about the Resort in Orlando, Florida, claiming it’s getting too crowded and too expensive. One of the biggest complaints we’ve seen from Guests lately has been caused by the new Disney Genie+ and Lightning Lane systems which were introduced in late 2021.

This replacement for Disney’s FastPass system has seen much criticism and frustration, leaving many Guests feeling confused by the service. In theory, this paid service should enhance Guests’ experience at the Parks, but in practice, it seemed to just be an expensive itinerary planner for some, while others love using the system. These paid services allow Guests to skip lines for a price, meaning Disney now has a financial incentive to have long lines. At Disney World, for $15.00 per day per Guest, you can skip the long standby queue by making a Lightning Lane reservation (new FastPass) and returning at that time.

In a post shared on Reddit, one Guest discussed the expensive nature of the Disney Parks at the moment:


Disney World. Instead of pricing people out of your parks, invest in your customers and build a 5th and maybe 6th park. Invest in your employees by paying them a better than living wage and emphasize training and retaining world class employees. Increase guest and employee experience

I love Disney, and I want as many people to experience it as possible. I understand supply and demand. I understand scarcity. I understand that certain people due to economic circumstances should not have access to this place. I understand profit is king. I get it. I love WDW though and I feel that the stewards charged with protecting it have taken a very wrong turn.  READ MORE...

Exercising

 

Self-Sabotage

• Many self-sabotaging cycles are trauma responses and patterns learned earlier in life as self-preservation.
• A fear of abandonment is really a fear of intimacy and connection.
• To change these patterns, we need to be willing to unlearn patterns of self-preservation while learning patterns of self-healing.

Source: twise/unsplash

Familiar and comfortable are not the same thing as healthy and safe. Yet, we are often attracted to what is familiar and comfortable because it resonates with our early conditioning. Until we begin taking a deep dive into our personal history, our repetitive patterns, and our learned conditioning, our ability to see whether we’re engaging in self-sabotaging behavior may be blurred. 

We may be in denial or turn to rationalizations or projections as excuses for why we continue repeating unhealthy patterns. At the core of all self-sabotaging behavior, we typically find fears of being abandoned, not feeling "good enough," and struggles with self-identity and self-esteem. However, once we peel back these layers, we begin seeing that many self-sabotaging cycles are trauma responses and patterns learned earlier in life as self-preservation.

Why We Self-Sabotage

Unresolved trauma: If we grew up in a toxic family, we were probably handed certain implicit roles, often for survival. We may have had narcissistic or abusive parents who shamed us, physically abused us, or emotionally neglected us. Or we may have had a parent who enabled others in the family to continue cycles of self-defeating behavior, including their own. 

These wounds are what get carried with us as self-sabotaging behavior. We often recreate the same patterns in our adult relationships that were modeled and conditioned for us in our childhood, including messages of not feeling worthy, fearing abandonment, or believing maladaptive mindsets that were taught as normal. Eventually, we wind up turning to more misery as “comfortable” or “familiar.”  READ MORE...

Rainndrops

Online Classes

 

For over 10 years I wore a mustache and while I did look very similar to the caricature illustrated above, I decided that I no longer wanted to be bothered by its maintenance...  so, off it came.

My PROBLEM all my life has been that I am very outspoken and so much so that I have been terminated from employment numerous times because of my outspoken behavior much to the constant disappointment of my spouse who has had to live wide the adverse side effects of my bullshit. 

Today, I am speaking out against education, specifically online education which seems to be gaining traction, especially in light of the COVID Pandemic that had become a global nightmare.

Personally, I have designed online courses and have taught online courses and in both instances, I have come to believe that online instruction is by far THE WORST WAY TO LEARN...  in general...  I say in general because for some people, online education is not only ideal but perfect.

My biggest problem with online education is...  it is very difficult to be hands on...  The best way to learn is to teach other.  The second best way to learn is to be hands on.

For me, learning means RETENTION.

The next problem I have is student interaction.  It is difficult to simulate student interaction in an online environment without being in some sort of chat room...  and, even in those chat rooms, there is very little that the instructor can do to stimulate the conversation and interaction.

My next problem is the quizzes.  Most quizzes are multiple-choice, T/F, fill in the blank, match items, and essay questions.  Online courses avoid essay questions because the instructor will have to do some work.  But more importantly, students have a very hard time answering essay questions as they have not been taught how to drill down on a subject or answer a question with a response longer than 1-2 short sentences.

How can an opinion be formulated in one to two sentences?

How can a student demonstrate competency and UNDERSTANDING in one to two sentences?

I can imagine teaching math in an online environment...  but, I cannot imagine teaching theoretical physics in an online environment...  or even applied psychology.

Opinions are like assholes...  everybody has got one...

MRI & The Lower Back (L4/L5)

L4/L5 are two disks in the lower spine of the human body and are more than likely involved when there is lower back pain being experienced by an adult in their 70s like myself...

Tomorrow, I will have an MRI performed on my lower back to determine the cause of my problems...

According to my research, my discomfort and inability to walk correctly could come from:

• a slipped disk
• a bulging disk
• bone degeneration
• pinched nerve

There are other issues but these are the main ones...  and the solutions are:

• do nothing
• injections
• surgery
• therapy

Of course, insurance has a lot to do with what type of treatment is offered unless you have the out-of-pocket funds to pay for what the insurance company does not...

My MRI will be sedated and because I needed to be sedated I had to wait two months for the procedure.  Many people think I am a PUSSY for needing to be sedated but I really don't give a shit what they think...  what I care about is what I think and what I need to have done for my own mental health and well being.

There is one good thing about being in one's 70s and that is you don't have to concern yourself with what others think.

American Freedom

 Anybody that starts dicking around with my Freedom of Speech really gets my nose out of joint...  

Personally, I don't give a damn about a conservative's point-of-view nor do I give a rat's ass about a liberal's point-of-view...  but what gets me pissed is not being able to hear both sides...

Freedom of speech is not an athletic competition where if one side wins, that's the views that we have to listen to until the next competition...

Freedom of speech is a constitutional right and that constitutional right does not favor one view over another view...  the constitution favors both views and demands both views be heard otherwise we do not have freedom of speech.

Now that Elon Musk has purchased TWITTER everyone on the liberal side of the fence perceives that it is going to favor the conservatives...  especially since before the purchase Twitter favored the liberals...  BUT THAT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN...  Musk might be a conservative but he is also intelligent enough to realize that freedom of speech actually means allowing BOTH SIDES to be heard equally....

What a concept!!!  just like the My Pillow guy saying he has towels that work...

Dragonfire

Emotional Intelligence

Healthy emotional intelligence can bring you greater joy and fulfillment in your own life, and it surely has the power to increase the quality of your relationships. There's a reason why my recent book Date Smart, which sets out to help people find and build healthy relationships, focuses so heavily on EQ skills: Solid emotional intelligence is critical for all healthy intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships. In truth, with so much change and chaos in the world, emotional intelligence is the go-to quality we all need.


But emotional intelligence is not a given. We have to work to gain and maintain our EQ throughout life.

There are five core aspects of EQ:

1. Self-knowledge
2. Self-control
3. Social skills
4. Empathy
5. Personal motivation for self-growth

The depth and breadth of these key components might seem intimidating, but increasing your EQ doesn't need to be complicated. Over the years working with clients as a clinical psychologist, I've developed a simple, actionable strategy that reliably helps people grow in each of these areas simultaneously.

The method is a simple "1-2-3" process. As situations come up in life that bring up uncomfortable thoughts and feelings such as anger, irritation, or confusion, mentally run through these three steps. 

Although the process may feel unfamiliar at first, it will become second nature with patience, practice, and perseverance. Each step naturally increases all five of the core EQ aspects, though some steps will hone certain EQ elements more than others.

With this little "1-2-3" mindset shift—and a lot of ongoing practice—you'll feel your level of EQ growing stronger by the day:  

TO READ ABOUT THESE THREE STEPS, CLICK HERE...

Skateboarding

 

Lakes in the USA

Most of the United States doesn’t live along the Pacific or Atlantic Coasts, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t inland wonders and beautiful beaches. 14 of the clearest lakes in the US offer up an alternative paradise.

As with most bodies of water, the biggest threat to these natural resources is human development and debris left behind after recreational use. If you’re going to visit one of the clearest lakes in America, make sure to pack out everything that you packed in.

So where can you find some of the clearest lakes in the United States?

Here are 14 of the clearest lakes in the US:

1. Lake Tahoe
2. Hanging Lake
3. Crater Lake
4. Torch Lake
5. Norris Lake
6. Newfound Lake
7. Flathead Lake
8. Lake Chelan
9. Lake Murray
10. Lake Coeur D’Alene
11. Lake George
12. Lake Winnipesaukee
13. Lake Powell
14. Deer Lake

TO READ MORE ABOUT EACH OF THESE LAKES, CLICK HERE...

Dancing Ladies

 

Fighting COVID with Superstition

Columbia University reverted their COVID-19 policy, requiring students to mask indoors.

Gabriele Holtermann

Boy, is US higher education full of idiots: Columbia University, affiliated Barnard College and Pace University, among other schools, have all started requiring masking indoors again.

Columbia-Barnard only scrapped the mandate on March 14, so students got less than a month to breathe free, and now will be muzzled through June.

And all because campus administrators deem it more important to virtue-signal than to follow the actual science. They blame an uptick in COVID cases, though COVID poses no significant risk to their fully vaccinated student bodies.

Plus, as noted above, case numbers stopped being a useful indicator of coronavirus perils at least a year ago.

And just 0.001% of 15- to 24-year-olds are at risk of dying from COVID, per data from Johns Hopkins. And masking does very little to reduce transmission risks, anyway.

COVID is now endemic, not pandemic — meaning we’ll have to learn to live with the background risks it poses, just like the flu. It’ll help that learning process when the supposedly smartest folks in America stop relying on superstition to “fight” it.

Silver Ring

The Signs are Obvious

President Joe Biden has the lowest approval rating of any President in recent history surpassing Jimmy Carter (another Democrat)...

What does that say about the Democrats and all the people who vote for these Democrats?

Well...  it does not say much...  I'll tell you that.

The Democrats were so anxious to get Donald Trump out of office that they were blinded to the incompetence of their choice to replace their nemesis.  

Now that we have Biden as our President, we have:

• Inflation
• Escalating Immigration
• Increasing Crime & Violence
• Extended COVID Mandates
• Slow Economic Growth
• Increasing Illegal Drugs
• Educational Issues in K-12
• Censorship of Conservative Voice
• BLM/CRT/WOKE Issues

Social Media has caused Americans to be more divided than ever before as it is easy to put down the views of other people when you don't have to face them or make eye contact.  The divide has gotten so intense that some radicals believe that we are heading to a civil war-type confrontation.

However, I don't think it will escalate that far but what I do see is some sort of confrontation between the HAVES and the HAVE NOTS...  especially if prices continue to increase...  and artificially intelligent robots begin to replace jobs...

This is a lot closer than you may expect with 2030 being the turning point in this type of full-blown technology.

Our big issues are:

1. Freedom of Speech/Religion
2. Homeland Security
3. Employment/Wages
4. Abortion/Choice
5. Liberals/Conservatives
6. Wealthy/Poor
7. Healthcare Costs
8. Watered down College Education
9. Crime & Violence
10. Illegal Drugs

NOTE:  Once Elon Musk takes over TWITTER, there will be a change in mainstream media as it continues to try and censor the conservative voice.  Twitter will re-instate Donald Trump and social media will once again swing the pendulum in the opposite direction.

Exploding Flower

Book Sank on the Titanic

Only black-and-white images exist of the first "Great Omar" but a digital colourisation 

was created in 2001

One of the most lavishly decorated books the world has seen was despatched from London to New York in April 1912. The jewel-encrusted edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám was taken aboard the RMS Titanic and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, exactly 110 years ago.

A replacement was finished at great expense by the late 1930s but it was promptly incinerated by German bombers as the British capital was ravaged during the Blitz.

The young man behind this extravagant presentation of the polymath Khayyám's poetry would soon drown in an English seaside resort.

Would anyone dare to commission a third "Great Omar"?

'The greater the price the more I shall be pleased'

In 1911, Francis Sangorski finished work on a binding he had been labouring over at his Holborn workshop for two years.  READ MORE...

Amish Help

 

Indian Drama

Rasika Dugal starring in the 2020 movie Lootcase

Award-winning actor, Rasika Dugal, has never had more work, or been recognised more often.


The Indian actor's star is rising - she will soon be seen in the second season of drama, Delhi Crime on Netflix and in the film, Lord Curzon Ki Haveli. She is also currently working on a unnamed TV series.


But it hasn't always been this way. Like many actors, her early years in the industry were tough and frustrating. Ms Dugal worked on films that were never released and those that did reach the box office, did not attract much of an audience.


"While working on those films was a very fulfilling experience as a performer, the films didn't reach the audience I felt they deserved," she says.


When it came to distribution, the small films she worked on just did not have the marketing budgets to compete with the big blockbuster movies, so struggled to find an audience.


"All the popular and convenient screens and show timings [at cinemas] would already be taken by the bigger film," Ms Dugal explains.  READ MORE...

Sleeping Dog

 

New Cancer Clues

UK scientists have undertaken a huge "archaeological dig" of cancer in the UK, analysing the complete genetic make-up - or whole genome sequence - of tumours from about 12,000 patients.


The team says the unprecedented amount of data allowed them to uncover new patterns in the DNA of cancer - hinting at causes that are not yet understood.


They add that the genetic clues will ultimately help improve diagnosis and treatment.


The research is published in Science.


Cancer can be thought of as a corrupted version of our own healthy cells - mutations to our DNA change our cells until eventually they grow and divide uncontrollably.


Traditionally many cancers have been categorised by doctors based on where they are in the body and the type of cells involved - but whole genome sequencing can provide another layer of key information.


'Dinosaur footprints'
Whole genome sequencing is relatively new, but is already available on the NHS for a small number of specific cancers, including some blood cancers.


The NHS long-term plan aims to make it more widely available, through the NHS Genomic Medicine Service.  READ MORE...