Luck is where Preparation meets Opportunity

'When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you.' That lesson has stuck with me my whole life. When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better
Ch. 7 I Never Made It to the NFL

One day Andy took me for a walk. He put his arm around my shoulders and said "randy, its such a shame that people perceive you as being so arrogant, because its going to limit what you're going to be able to accomplish in life." Looking back, his wording was so perfect. He was actually saying, 'Randy, you're being a jerk.' But he said it in a way that made me open to his criticisms.
Ch. 14 The Dutch Uncle

My favorite non complainer of all time may be Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play Major League Baseball. He endured racism that many young people today couldn't even fathom . He knew he had to play better than the white guys , and he knew he had to work harder. So that's what he did. He vowed not to complain, even if his fans spit on him....
The message in the(ir) story is this: Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it wont make us happier
Ch. 34 Don't Complain, Just work harder.

The Last Lecture
By Randy Pausch
Hodder & Stroughton LtD
2008

Intensely Sadistic Brutality has become the norm

After reading this entry on another blog about Heath Ledger's role in Batman- The Dark Night, and how the joker was likened to the devil, my thoughts continued a step further...Batman does not believe in killing the bad guys...and the joker also doesn't want to kill Batman, but rather corrupt him. Maybe this was a subtle new non-violence undertone that Hollywood has suddenly and silently decided to try out. Apparently not..I thought to research the issue further and surprise! This movie has a "sustained level of intensely sadistic brutality throughout the film." I had to read on before i realized what they were talking about. Seems that I have become so accustomed to these scenes that they hadn't even made an impression to last in my mind.

Telegraph.co.uk
Our attitude to violence is beyond a joke as new Batman film, The Dark Knight, shows.
Jenny McCartney

Historically Inaccurate!

Brought to my attention by another blog, i'm relieved that someone has finally seen through the so-called freedom of expression facade, especially when it allows so many false claims to be accepted as truths by those who have no background on any given topic.

There is a long history of anti-Islamic polemic that uses sex and violence to attack the Prophet and his faith. This novel follows in that oft-trodden path, one first pioneered in medieval Christian writings. The novel provides no new reading of Aisha's life, but actually expands upon provocative themes regarding Muhammad's wives first found in an earlier novel by Salman Rushdie, "The Satanic Verses," which I teach.

The combination of sex and violence sells novels. When combined with falsification of the Islamic past, it exploits Americans who know nothing about Aisha or her seventh-century world and counts on stirring up controversy to increase sales. If Ms. Nomani and readers of the Journal wish to allow literature to "move civilization forward," then they should read a novel that gets history right.

According to the writer;
This saga upsets me as a Muslim -- and as a writer who believes that fiction can bring Islamic history to life in a uniquely captivating and humanizing way. "I'm devastated," Ms. Jones told me after the book got spiked, adding, "I wanted to honor Aisha and all the wives of Muhammad by giving voice to them, remarkable women whose crucial roles in the shaping of Islam have so often been ignored -- silenced -- by historians

Opinion; You Still Can't Write About Muhammad

By Asra . Nomani

Denise A. Spellberg; "I don't have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can't play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography."

The Wall Street Journal:
I didnt Kill 'The Jewel of Medina'
Denise A. Spellberg
Assoc. Professor of History and Middle Eastern Studies University of Texas at Austin

Robin Hood Taxed the Poor

It is this idea of Robin Hood, or taking from the rich to give to the poor, that has caused the most pain for the poor and the middle class. The reason the middle class is so heavily taxed is because of the robin hood ideal. The real reality is that the rich are not taxed. Its the middle class who pay for the poor, especially the educated upper income middle class.

The writer then goes on to explain how the rich are able to avoid being taxed or at least to minimize it to almost insignificant amounts, they 'saw an opportunity, they do not play by the same set of rules.'

Yet when you study the history of taxes, an interesting perspective emerges. As i said, the passage of taxes was only possible because the masses believed in the Robin Hood theory of economics, which was to take form the rich and give to everyone else. The problem was that the government's appetite for money was so great that taxes soon needed to be levied on the middle class, and from there it kept 'trickling down.'


The History of Taxes and the Power of Corporations
(Chapter 5)
Rich Dad Poor Dad
by Robert T. Kiyosaki
Warner Books 1998

Placing A Negative Paradigm

Regarding Huntington's claim about the clash of civilizations, I think that rather than being realistic evaluations regarding the future, these types of claims seem to me to be determining new goals in an attempt to influence public opinion within the framework of these goals. Until the disintegration of the Soviet Block, there was the idea of a clash between the East and West, or between NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries. This time, by creating new enemy fronts, a clash between civilizations based on religious and cultural differences is being prepared and a new foundation is being laid for the continuation of the rule of the power blocks.

Regarding the Information Age and the Clash of Civilizations
by Fethullah Gülen
Friday, 19 November 2004

Confessions About Microevolution

...genetic science has discovered that variations, which Darwin thought could account for 'the origin of species,' actually do no such thing . For this reason evolutionary biologists were forced to distinguish between variation within species and the formation of new ones, and to propose two different concepts for these different phenomena. Diversity within a species - that is, variation - they called 'microevolution,' and the hypothesis of the development of the new species was termed 'macroevolution.'

These two concepts have appeared in biology books for quite some time. But there is actually a deception going on here, because the examples of variation that evolutionary biologists have called 'microevolution,' actually have nothing to do with the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution proposes that living things can develop and take on new genetic data by the mechanism of mutation and natural selection. However .. variations can never create new genetic information, and are thus unable to bring about 'evolution.' Giving variations the name of 'microevolution' is actually an ideological preference on the part of evolutionary biologists.

Taken from
Darwinsim Refuted
How the Theory of Evolution Breaks Down in the Light of Modern Science.
Harun Yahya
Goodword Publishing 2004

This capter places a sharp distinguishing line between microevolution (a.k.a variation) and macroevolution - which is based on the variation within genetic boundaries.