Tag Archives: ultima

The Crossroads of Should and Must – Elle Luna

by Myrna Posted on June 29, 2016

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

The Crossroads of Should and Must

Find and Follow Your Passion

Elle Luna

Genre: Self-Improvement

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: April 7, 2015

Publisher: Workman Publishing Company

Seller: Workman Publishing Co., Inc.


Who hasn’t asked the question “How can I find and follow my true calling?” Elle Luna frames this moment as “standing at the crossroads of Should and Must.” “Should” is what we feel we ought to be doing, or what is expected of us. “Must” is the thing we dream of doing, our heart’s desire. And it was her own personal journey that inspired Elle Luna to write a brief online manifesto that, in a few short months, has touched hundreds of thousands of people who’ve read it or heard Elle speak on the topic. Now Ms. Luna expands her ideas into an inspirational, highly visual gift book for every recent graduate, every artist, every seeker, every career changer. The Crossroads of Should and Must has a universal message—we get to choose the path between Should and Must. And it gives every reader permission to embrace this message. It’s about the difference between jobs, careers, and callings. The difference between going to work and becoming one with your work. Why knowing what you want is often the hardest part. It gives eye-opening techniques for reconnecting with one’s inner voice, like writing your own obituary (talk about putting life in perspective). It talks about the most common fears of choosing Must over Should—money, time, space , and the ultimate fear: total vulnerability—and shores up our hesitation with inspiring stories of and quotes from the artists and writers and thinkers who’ve faced their own crossroads of Should and Must and taken the leap. It explains the importance of mistakes, of “unlearning,” of solitude, of keeping moving, of following a soul path. Presented in four chapters—The Crossroads, The Origin of Should, Must , and The Return—inspired by the hero’s journey outlined by Joseph Campbell, The Crossroads of Should and Must guides us from the small moment, discovering our Must, to the big moment—actually doing something about it, and returning to share our new gifts with the world.

Original link: 

The Crossroads of Should and Must – Elle Luna

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Ultima, Uncategorized, Workman Publishing Company | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on The Crossroads of Should and Must – Elle Luna

Tennessee Lawmaker Insists On Giving Away a Rifle Similar to the One Used in the Orlando Massacre

by Jed24A25995 Posted on June 13, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The day after a rifle similar to an AR-15 was used to massacre 49 people at an LGBT club in Orlando, Tennessee state Rep. Andy Holt is standing by his decision to give away an AR-15 as a door prize at an upcoming campaign fundraiser and turkey shoot.

In fact, he’s now giving away two. Holt, a Republican, told a reporter who asked if the prize was insensitive in light of the recent shooting, “absolutely not.” Holt told The Tennessean that the only problem with the assault rifle is that “it’s black and it looks real scary.”

“If I beat somebody to death with a hammer that’s just a hammer,” Holt continued. “But if I was to take and wrap it up in electrical tape and make it black, I guess that would make it an assault hammer.”

Holt was a cosponsor on the state’s recent anti-transgender bathroom bill, which ultimately failed, and he introduced a successful bill that permits full-time employees of Tennessee colleges and universities to carry a handgun on campus.

In a Facebook post Monday morning, Holt issued a call to arms to his constituents. “I want you to arm yourselves and learn to shoot with deadly accuracy should the need arise,” he wrote. “Protect your family. Protect yourselves. Protect your friends. Our government has made it quite clear that it is incapable of doing so. At the end of the day, it’s your responsibility anyways.”

Read article here:

Tennessee Lawmaker Insists On Giving Away a Rifle Similar to the One Used in the Orlando Massacre

Posted in bigo, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tennessee Lawmaker Insists On Giving Away a Rifle Similar to the One Used in the Orlando Massacre

Forget Immigration and Affirmative Action. Chief Justice Roberts Wants to Talk About Peat Moss.

by DeidreBarreto Posted on May 31, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

With a month left before its summer recess, the Supreme Court has yet to issue rulings on several landmark cases involving immigration, reproductive rights, and affirmative action. So on Monday morning, TV cameras were parked outside, and the courtroom was buzzing with anticipation when the justices convened to release orders and opinions.

Then Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. read an opinion about peat moss.

Reporters in attendance, at least one of whom had driven all the way from Charlottesville, Virginia, for the occasion, hoped at least for a decision in Fisher v. University of Texas, the long-awaited case involving race in college admissions that was argued back in December. Or perhaps an opinion in the state of Texas’ case challenging the Obama administration’s executive action on immigration, which would defer the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. Even a ruling in Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy case would have been more exciting than US Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co., a technical regulatory dispute involving peat moss and the Clean Water Act that was the subject of the first and only opinion of the day.

Reading from the bench, Roberts toyed with deflated reporters by jauntily discussing the benefits of peat, “an organic material that forms in waterlogged grounds, such as wetlands and bogs,” and its uses in gardening and golf. “It can also be used to provide structural support and moisture for smooth, stable greens that leave golfers with no one to blame but themselves for errant putts,” he continued. He ad libbed an observation about peat’s use in brewing whiskey, which was not in the published opinion.

But peat is not all golf balls and highballs, or the case wouldn’t have been at the high court. The Hawkes Co. wanted to harvest about 500 acres of peat moss from swampland in Minnesota for use in golf courses and landscaping. But the Army Corps told the company that the tract in question included wetlands, which it asserted were protected under the Clean Water Act. The Army Corps argued that its decision couldn’t be reviewed by the courts, but the company sued. The suit led Roberts to expound on the virtues of peat and ultimately to rule in the company’s favor by allowing the courts to oversee such wetlands determinations.

After Roberts cheerfully finished reading his opinion, he announced that there were no more decisions in the queue. Further opinions won’t come until next Monday.

While the unanimous Hawkes decision has the potential to weaken enforcement of the Clean Water Act, it isn’t among the court’s pending high-profile cases that could affect large numbers of people and tip the scales in the culture wars—the kinds of cases that make news. The cases that remain undecided are significant, and there are a lot of them. By one count, the court still needs to issue opinions in 24 cases argued this term. Right now there are only four days in June scheduled for the release of new decisions before the summer recess.

What explains the backlog? The court is not a transparent institution, so observers can only hypothesize. But the February death of Justice Antonin Scalia is no doubt a major factor. There’s been some speculation, for instance, that Scalia had been assigned to write the opinion in a case involving Puerto Rican self-governance. Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle remains the only case argued in January that hasn’t been decided. When Scalia died, the opinion in that case may have had to be reassigned to a different justice.

It’s possible that other half-written Scalia opinions, especially if they involved other contentious, potential 5-4 cases, are also in limbo or need to be retooled by other justices. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said last week, eight “is not a good number for a multi-member court.”

Regardless of the reasons for the slowdown, if the justices want to get out of town before the Fourth of July weekend and partake in some of those peat-enhanced activities, they’re going to have to start cranking out a lot more decisions.

Link: 

Forget Immigration and Affirmative Action. Chief Justice Roberts Wants to Talk About Peat Moss.

Posted in Casio, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, organic, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Forget Immigration and Affirmative Action. Chief Justice Roberts Wants to Talk About Peat Moss.

What Americans Can Learn From Israel’s Forgotten War

by ChauLansford Posted on May 21, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In 1999, a Canadian-Israeli teenager named Matti Friedman went to war as an Israeli soldier. He manned a small hilltop outpost called the Pumpkin, one of a string of Israeli bases that stretched across southern Lebanon and served as both a defensive buffer for the towns of northern Israel and a magnet for attacks by Hezbollah fighters. But while thousands of Israeli soldiers served at such outposts in that “security zone” during the 1980s and 1990s, Friedman says their war has been forgotten—not just in Israel but in the United States and other countries that would soon find themselves in similar conflicts.

“People lost friends, they lost limbs, they lost kids—and basically no one’s talked about it since it ended,” says Friedman, who is now a freelance journalist in Israel and the author of Pumpkinflowers, a newly released memoir of his time at the outpost. It’s both an instant-classic war diary—Friedman’s intensely self-aware writing captures all the flavors of boredom, humor, and occasional panic that marked life in Lebanon—and a brief, fascinating history of Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. The second part is necessary, he says, because Israeli society is allowing the conflict to simply fade away. He points out that the war in southern Lebanon hasn’t been given “a name or a military ribbon or a monument or a history.” Even his term for it, the “security zone war,” is one he coined himself.

“It left very deep personal memories for people but it left basically no collective memory,” Friedman says. “When I was doing research I was constantly trying to explain to people what war I meant.” Pumpkinflowers, he hopes, will convince Israelis—and others—to start “writing about it and thinking about it as a period that’s worth remembering.

Friedman recently spoke with Mother Jones about the book, which was published on May 3.

Mother Jones: Since Iraq and Afghanistan, there have been numerous memoirs published in the United States about war from the same perspective of yours, that of young soldiers and officers. Are similar books being written in Israel?

Matti Friedman: There isn’t a lot of war writing of this kind in Israel. We don’t have a lot of recent war memoirs. Probably the most famous war memoir in Israel written recently was actually about the war of independence in 1948. But the more recent wars—like the one in Lebanon and the West Bank and things like that—have produced very little of value.

MJ: Do you think there’s a reason for that?

MF: There’s a few things. A lot of the military service in the past 20 years or so hasn’t been a war like the Six Day War or the ’73 war. It’s not something that’s dramatic, and a lot of the guys like me come back to civilian life and the society basically gives you no indication that what happened to you was important. I think a lot of young Israelis think that the great history has already happened and now what we do is kind of bullshit. Except that the kind of war that we saw in Lebanon—which is mostly waiting around punctuated by moments of terror and this very hard-to-understand, very complicated political situation—that’s the way wars look now. So we have to find a way to write about them, because that’s the way it works in the 21st century.

MJ: Are there things in the news now, or in more recent conflicts, that remind you of Lebanon?

MF: I remember seeing pretty early in Iraq a video, a kind of jumpy militant video. You see American military vehicles traveling along the road with the logo in the corner of whatever militant faction it was and a martial soundtrack in the background, and then something explodes. That’s pure Lebanon. That’s right out of the Hezbollah textbook. One of the first effective videotaped attacks happened at Outpost Pumpkin in 1994.

When I started hearing about IEDs—people were losing their legs, vehicles were being hit by these kind of devices that were buried under the road or beside the road—that was Lebanon. That was the major threat in Lebanon. And, just in general, the experience of seeing a strong, technologically-savvy Western military on hostile territory, with kind of amorphous goals fighting an enemy that is, on paper, much, much weaker—but is also more determined and ends up being stronger in weird kinds of ways. It’s so clear to me that that was the laboratory where 21st century warfare was developed. That was the first war of the 21st century, and there’s a lot to learn from that period.

MJ: Such as?

MF: If you look at the Israeli experience in Lebanon, you understand that it’s a bad idea to get involved in an enterprise without a concrete plan of what you’re supposed to accomplish and how you’re supposed to get out—which I think Americans have understood anyway. But that was, for me, what we learned in Lebanon: that we went in and we just didn’t have a plan for getting out, and we ended up staying for years and years and years with goals that were very amorphous and ultimately unattainable.

MJ: A lot of reviews compared your book to Michael Herr’s Dispatches, which is a famous Vietnam memoir that helped inspire Apocalypse Now. What war books did you read while you wrote Pumpkinflowers?

MF: I was reading World War I writing. There was something about their cool attitude toward writing about this stuff. Their books are not exciting descriptions of combat. It’s not cinematic, it’s not influenced by television or by war movies. They couldn’t use obscenity, they couldn’t describe violence too much, they couldn’t talk about sex. They were limited in what they could write, and it makes their works better because it forces them to be oblique—and that ends up being a good way to write about this stuff. More than anything, I like the way that they were writing in the first person but they weren’t egotistical. Somehow they managed to write books in the first person that weren’t really about them—they were about their generation, they were about the experience as seen through their eyes. They weren’t picking at their own soul and making a big deal of themselves. That struck me as a good way to do it.

MJ: The last part of the book is about going to Lebanon in 2002 and your visit to the Pumpkin as a civilian. Have you ever had any contact with anyone who fought against you or other Israelis during the security zone war?

MF: No, although I am sure that there is someone like that living in Ottawa now, or somewhere in the states, and I would love to meet that person. And you know what? You never know. You never know who could read that book and write me an email. I could get a crazy Facebook message this evening that says, “Oh, you were near Nabatiyeh in 1998. That’s interesting, do you remember this?” And of course, I dream of things like that happening. That’s what I want to happen. We’ll see if it happens.

Visit site – 

What Americans Can Learn From Israel’s Forgotten War

Posted in alo, Casio, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What Americans Can Learn From Israel’s Forgotten War

Unplugging the Colorado River

by Myrna Posted on May 20, 2016

Could the end be near for one of the West’s biggest dams? Taken from: Unplugging the Colorado River ; ; ;

Continue at source: 

Unplugging the Colorado River

Posted in cannabis, eco-friendly, FF, For Dummies, G & F, GE, growing marijuana, horticulture, LAI, Monterey, ONA, solar, solar power, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Unplugging the Colorado River

Can Donald Trump Get Away With Proposing to Destroy the US Government?

by FallonPratten Posted on May 15, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Today the Wall Street Journal asks a vital question:

Donald Trump’s Plans Don’t Add Up. Do Voters Care?

Oh please. Bernie Sanders’ plans don’t add up and his followers couldn’t care less. Paul Ryan’s plans don’t add up. Republicans don’t care. Mitt Romney’s plans didn’t add up. No one cared. John McCain’s plans didn’t add up. No one cared. George Bush’s plans didn’t add up. No one cared. Ronald Reagan’s plans didn’t add up. No one cared.

Now, I admit that Trump is performing a destruction test on this theory. His tax plan blows a $9.5 trillion hole in the deficit and he plans to increase spending on infrastructure and national defense and he promises not to touch Medicare or Social Security. He claims he’ll make up for this by cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and I suppose one could view this as the ultimate test of just how much waste, fraud, and abuse the public thinks the American government is responsible for. Unfortunately, the historical evidence probably doesn’t favor a rational answer.

So what does Trump’s budget look like? Someone must care, after all. At no small effort, I have created the colorful chart below. I used the CBO’s projections as my baseline. Trump says he wants to balance the budget, so that puts a firm cap on overall spending. He says he wants to spend more on defense, so I added a modest $20 billion per year to the baseline projection. He says he won’t touch Social Security or Medicare, so I left those at their baseline projections. The revenue number comes from TPC’s analysis of Trump’s tax plan. Ditto for the interest number. Trump says he wants to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure, so I bumped up the current infrastructure budget by $100 billion and carried it through each year.

As you can see, by the end of eight years, not only are we spending zero dollars on nearly every government program, but infrastructure spending is also wiped out and we can make only a fraction of our interest payments:

So yeah, you could say this doesn’t add up. Or you could say it’s more of Trump’s usual buffoonery. Or that Donald Trump couldn’t care less about the federal budget. So why doesn’t this get more attention? Let’s take a series of guesses:

Most people find numbers confusing and boring. One trillion, ten trillion, whatever.
The press shies away from focusing on stuff like this because their readers find it confusing and boring and don’t read it.
Also because they routinely give Republicans a pass on this stuff. They figure it’s mostly just routine pandering, and all politicians do it.
In any case, the public takes tax and budget plans mostly as statements of values, not as things that will ever actually happen.

So there you have it. Trump is testing whether he can get away with literally proposing a tax and budget plan that would bankrupt the country and destroy nearly the entire federal government within just a few years. What do you think?

Read the article:  

Can Donald Trump Get Away With Proposing to Destroy the US Government?

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Can Donald Trump Get Away With Proposing to Destroy the US Government?

There’s worrying volcano news. But could that be good climate news?

by LandonH3214 Posted on May 11, 2016

There’s worrying volcano news. But could that be good climate news?

By on May 11, 2016Share

If you, like me, have Google alerts for the terms “volcano,” “earthquake,” “end of days,” and “survivalist cult now accepting applications,” the recent news that both Mount St. Helens and Yellowstone’s supervolcano are showing signs of activity may have had you reaching for your bug-out bag. Then again, if you’re more afraid of climate change than natural disasters, massive volcanic explosions might actually sound like a good thing, right? After all, a huge plume of ash could block sunlight and lower global temperatures.

Here’s what’s up in volcano news: Over the past two months, Mount St. Helens in Washington state, located a scant 174 miles from this author’s house, has been experiencing an “earthquake swarm.” More than 130 small quakes have rumbled beneath the mountain, indicating that magma is on the move. But while this sounds terrifying, it’s actually nothing to worry about, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which wrote on Facebook that “there are no signs of an imminent eruption.” Whew.

But what about Yellowstone? Yellowstone National Park is located on top of a supervolcano, and scientists discovered a few years ago that the massive magma reservoir beneath it is two and a half times larger than previously believed, measuring 55 miles across. An eruption there could be 2,000 times larger than the blast at St. Helens in 1980 that killed 57 people, and, Tech Insider reports, such an event could cover much of the Midwest in ash, wipe out food and water supplies, and render vast swaths of land uninhabitable for at least a decade.

Scientists have long thought that Yellowstone wasn’t due to erupt for at least another 10,000 years. However, a recently posted YouTube video alleging to show unusual seismic activity at the park has had some people speculating that eruption is imminent. It also, naturally, has inspired quite a few headlines that might have you stockpiling food and water.

But pause a moment before you head for the hills. I asked Bill Steele of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network if I should add the Yellowstone supervolcano to my (lengthy) list of anxieties. He said, quite simply, “No.” Then he laughed.

The recent “unusual” seismic activity at Yellowstone isn’t actually unusual, Steele told me. “Yes, there are earthquakes there and it is a volcanic hotspot, but this is normal.”

As for Mount St. Helen’s, Steele said that even if it blew today, it just wouldn’t be that big a deal. The major eruption in 1980 let off all the mountain’s gas, and so, at worst, the next time St. Helen’s blows, it’ll be mostly steam.

But let’s just pretend for a moment that Steele is totally wrong and both Yellowstone and St. Helen’s go today — and go big. Is it possible that large volcanic eruptions could actually be good for the environment? After all, one thing that definitely is happening right now is global climate change, so wouldn’t it be good to have an ashy reprieve from soaring temperatures, helping us keep the ice caps intact at least a little while longer?

Yes, Steele tells me, if a volcano threw enough material into the stratosphere, it would cool the planet for a while. In fact, big eruptions have led to ice ages in the past. On the other hand, volcanic emissions include carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, and other greenhouse gases, which worsen climate change (though volcanos are a minuscule source of warming gases compared to fossil fuel burning by humans). So a big eruption would be kind of a mixed bag for the climate.

Ultimately, the planet will be alright if and when both volcanos blow. “The Earth can handle volcanos,” Steele says. “It’s having a lot more difficulty with human activity.”

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Originally from – 

There’s worrying volcano news. But could that be good climate news?

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, global climate change, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, solar, solar power, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on There’s worrying volcano news. But could that be good climate news?

The Surprising Way Parents Sabotage Their Daughters

by DessieC90438 Posted on May 7, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Caroline Paul frantically tried to get her ice pick to take hold in the slushy snow. Her friend had fallen into the bottom of an ice canyon and her other friend, strapped to the rope that held all three of them, was headed in the same direction.

Paul needed to anchor herself and pull them both up. But the unusually warm weather on Mount Denali prevented her ice pick from staying put. In those moments on the United States’ largest peak, Paul had to take everything she knew about climbing (very little) and everything she feared about dying (a lot) and set some priorities.

Caroline Paul calls her latest book the Lean In for girls, with cliffs, trees, and rivers. Bloomsbury USA

Before becoming an author, Caroline Paul worked as a firefighter for the San Francisco Fire Department. Photo courtesy CarolinePaul.com

Paul lived to tell the tale, and it’s become one of the 10 so-called “misadventures” that the scuba diver, paraglider, luge champion, pilot, and firefighter-turned-writer shares in her book.

The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure, isn’t as dramatic as it is thrilling, hilarious, and packed with tips on ways to practice bravery every day. The Gutsy Girl, published March 1, is for young girls but also has a message for parents: Stop telling your daughters to be careful.

We caught up with Paul the day before she went flying in an experimental plane she describes as “a hang glider with a go-kart underneath.” She talked about how we learn to be brave and why the outdoors is the best place to cultivate it. If we want our girls to grow into strong women, we’ve got to let them be gusty, she says.

Mother Jones: What made you want to write The Gutsy Girl?

Caroline Paul: Over the years I had seen that my female peers often said they were too scared to do something, and it struck me because often what they were talking about was not that big of deal, like picking up a bug and putting it outside, like going on bike rides. I didn’t think a lot about it until my friends who are parents lamented to me that their daughter was a real scaredy-cat. In watching her, I saw that her parents were telling her all the time: “Be careful,” “watch out,” “no,” “don’t.” I realized that it was the parents who were really anxious and fearful for her, and that was something she caught from them. I’ve noticed this more, not only with girls but with women. It seems to start at a very, very young age.

MJ: The Gutsy Girl is full of tales of scuba diving, paragliding, ice climbing, and even your eight-mile crawl around a track in an attempt to beat the world record. Not all of your stories are about your successes. How did you choose what to include?

CP: I picked 10 of my misadventures, and I’ve had more than that unfortunately, because it’s the misadventures that really teach the lessons that I want girls to learn. Lessons like bravery, resilience, camaraderie, decision-making, risk assessment, which is a boring word but so important. I feel really strongly that girls are not taught these things; they sort of pick them up as they get older in other areas that aren’t the outdoors.

Caroline Paul in front of her ultra-light aircraft Photo courtesy Caroline Paul

MJ: Why is that a great place for girls to be gutsy?

CP: The great thing about the outdoors is that it’s so obvious out there. When you’re standing on the edge of the cliff with your paraglider and you’re asking yourself whether it’s too dangerous, you’re going to assess your skills, you’re going to look at your fear, you’re going to access your confidence. All of that stuff is super important when we’re adults.

MJ: How can women be more brave in daily life, say, in the workplace?

CP: I often see women’s unwillingness to take initiative in things. First of all, men will do it for them and that really needs to change. I think we as women know that; I do it, too. But men have been taught for so long to try everything.

MJ: What do you recommend for girls who don’t have access to mountain climbing, ski trips, or other extreme activities?

CP: Adventure can happen super close to home. You don’t have to go to far-off countries and you don’t have to climb big mountains and buy fancy equipment at all. An adventure is getting on your bike with your friends; an adventure is hiking through a new park. It’s really about getting outside your comfort zone—then you have become successful adventurer.

MJ: Who are some of your heroes?

Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman went to France to get her pilot’s license in 1920 when she wasn’t allowed into American flight schools. wikipedia commons

CP: When I was growing up, I didn’t have any. The only hero I knew of was Amelia Earhart; it seemed like she was the big exception to the rule. In other words, women didn’t do adventuring. But upon researching this book I realized there were a lot of women I could have been told about. My favorite is Bessie Coleman, a storm pilot and parachutist. She was African American and female, and since none of the flight schools would allow her to study with them, she went to France. Not only the fact that she wanted to fly back then (in the early 1900s), which is an obstacle psychologically as well as logistically, but then to face all that prejudice and all those naysayers and still do it? That’s the ultimate definition of gusty.

Caroline Paul says it’s not about being fearless, but learning how to manage the emotion. Photo courtesy Caroline Paul

MJ: What’s the hardest part about being gutsy?

CP: Managing fear, which I think a lot of girls and women don’t bother to do because we are infiltrated by this idea that we should be fearful. I’m seeing from other people just how deeply they feel that girls are more fragile than boys. What they’re not thinking about is that before puberty girls are actually stronger than boys, most of the time they’re ahead in terms of coordination and emotional maturity. But studies show that they are already inculcated with the idea that they could get hurt when they think about things like riding bikes. We teach them at such a young age that they are fragile. I hope that this book combats that.

MJ: How are you gutsy in your everyday life?

CJ: Well as a writer, just putting words on the page is such a heartrending and awful, soul-crushing experience. When you start with a book and tell yourself, really, you’re going to finish this, that takes all the life lessons you learn in the outdoors and you have to apply them. It takes bravery and it definitely takes teamwork. I applied a lot of these things. On more than one occasion, I remember Wendy (MacNaughton, who illustrated the book) looked at me and said, “Why aren’t you being gutsy about this?” And of course people call you on your own stuff and you have to knuckle down.

MJ: Anything gutsy you did recently?

CP: Recently when my dishwasher broke my first reaction was, “I can’t do this, I have to call one of my guy friends.” But the truth is, these days it’s all on YouTube—there’s nothing that any one of us can’t do. I fixed my own dishwasher and I felt smug. And great.

MJ: How can we ignore, or defeat, our fear?

CP: I’m not against fear. I think people think I’m fearless, and I’m not. I do believe it’s important that when you do feel fear you take it out and look at it, and then put it in it’s rightful place. What’s ahead is exhilaration and focus and anticipation—all these emotions that will make what you’re about to do super fun. The fear is just reflective, so put it where it should go, which is often the back of the line.

In the book I also encourage girls to practice acts of micro-bravery. The concept comes from Rachel Simmons, co-founder of Girls Leadership (in San Francisco). She says that bravery is learned, and so we need to teach ourselves and be taught it, and one way is by taking small steps. As you do those you start to learn so much about yourself, where your boundaries are, and what the feeling of fear versus the feeling of excitement is, because they often feel similar and chemically they’re similar. So by practicing daily acts of micro-bravery you’re teaching yourself how to recognize the difference between exhilaration and fear.

We have to start so much earlier teaching girls to stand up in the ways that women want to when they’re in the office. At work, it’s just so late by then.

MJ: Is your book sort of a “no boys allowed” space?

CP: I feel strongly that boys should read this book as well. Girls have to sit through so many books with boy characters, white boy characters. There’s no reason at all that boys should be told that this book isn’t necessary for them. They need to see that there are bad-ass girls out there.

Visit link: 

The Surprising Way Parents Sabotage Their Daughters

Posted in alternative energy, Anchor, Bloomsbury USA, Casio, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, oven, Radius, solar, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Surprising Way Parents Sabotage Their Daughters

"Captain America: Civil War" Is a Big Dumb Movie You Will Enjoy

by JohnnieFreeland Posted on May 6, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

When last we saw our friends from Marvel, they were doing…something. What was the last film? Ant-Man? I don’t really remember much about Ant-Man, except that Paul Rudd fought the drug-addled congressman from the first season of House of Cards.

When last we memorably saw our friends from Marvel, they were…fighting James Spader…in a fictional European country. Tony Stark wanted to help people so he built a robot (James Spader) to protect people. But then the robot decided to kill people, like they do, and blah blah blah, eventually the Avengers beat James Spader but not without a lot of people in this fictional European country dying.

So here we are now in a bold new world, post-James Spader rampage.

Captain America: Civil War.

Thor and the Hulk and some other pals seem to be off somewhere, but the rest of the team is up to their old tricks. In the beginning of Captain America: Civil War, the eponymous main superhero leads what could be called “The Avengers: The New Class,” including Wanda Maximoff (the Olsen sister who has witch powers), The Vision (aka Paul Bettany’s sex robot), and Captain America’s buddy Falcon (Anthony Mackie), as they head to Africa to kill some Hydra member of no particular importance. One thing leads to another, and civilians die.

Dammit! Not again, Avengers!

The world will not stand for this. (Sad truth: The only time when the world won’t stand for civilian death is when it comes to superhero films.)

So leaders of the world get together and pass a treaty to combat climate change incorporate the Avengers into some sort of United Nations command structure.

Captain America is not thrilled with this idea because Captain America doesn’t need some bureaucrat in Brussels to tell him when to right a wrong. (Also, and coincidentally, his best friend—the Winter Soldier, aka Bucky Barnes, being played by Sebastian Stan—is a fugitive superassassin on the run.) Tony Stark, having been chastened by the events of the second Avengers film—it was him, after all, who built James Spader and was ultimately responsible for the deaths of all those fictional Europeans—sides with the pro-regulation (anti-Captain America) team. Voila, tension. Plus, not only does Tony Stark not wear his Iron Man suit very often, he doesn’t even tie up the tie on his normal suit all the way. It just sort of sits there, loosened.

Then when the powers of the world gather to sign the “Sit on it, Captain America” act, there is—surprise!—a terrorist attack. In superhero movies, world leaders are not allowed to gather without there being a terrorist attack. (Every superhero film is the way a young Dick Cheney imagined every prom night would be: Everyone’s very attractive and there’s a terror attack.) One of the world leaders who perishes is the King of Wakanda. Chadwick Boseman, as the slain king’s son vows to avenge his father.

Dun dun.

So who did the blowing up? Captain America’s buddy the Winter Soldier of course! Or was it? The law enforcement community seems to think so, but Captain America doesn’t care what the law enforcement community thinks. He catches up to Sebastian Stan and Sebastian Stan is like “no way did I do that” and Captain America is like “I believe you. You were in Gossip Girl.“

Imagine a lot more of this. For a pretty long time. Eventually the stage is set for the titular civil war wherein Tony Stark, War Machine (Don Cheadle), Black Panther, Vision, Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson), and Spiderman (Tom Hollander) try to stop the fugitives—Captain America, The Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch, Falcon, Ant-Man, and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner)—from…trying to prove Sebastian Stan’s innocence, I think? It isn’t really clear.

Throughout this film, people often say to Captain America, “Should we tell Tony Stark about this new and revealing information?” And Captain America says, “That neo-liberal shill wouldn’t understand.” Everything could be sorted out if they just talked, and there’s a perfect place to do so in the second act. But of course, this is a Captain America movie, and Captain America is the star and he gets to be right despite obviously not being right. The film goes to great lengths to make Captain America accidentally correct about a lot of things. The choices Captain America makes when he is making choices are bad choices but the film flips over itself to justify him by sheer luck. In this film, Captain America fails upward.

My main problem with this movie: Captain America is sort of just a selfish hypocrite. Also, boring. And he isn’t even super. (He is strong, though.) And he could just be shot with a bullet. (There are a bunch of times in this movie when he loses his shield.) His whole team, in fact, save the Olsen twin who is a Witch, could just be shot to death by any old infantry unit.

Also, with so many superheroes in this movie, writers clearly had to find reasons to peel them off. Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) just sort of shrugs and walks away after one fight. I have no idea where Vision went after the second act. As far as I can tell, no explanation is made for why he is gone. Falcon, War Machine, Spiderman, Ant-man, and Hawkeye are all given some nonsense diagnose to deliver about why they are crapping out, but Vision just sort of ghosts out. Of course, they have to peel off so we can have Tony Stark fight Captain America.

No surprise: They are all being tricked into fighting each other by some shady German character (the dude who played the other race car driver in the 2013 film Rush) with dubious motives, but that’s because it doesn’t matter. Here’s the most surprising thing: It isn’t a bad film! It’s enjoyable, even. When the Avengers actually fight, it’s fun! The movie’s themes of this and the infamously brooding Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Sadness seem somewhat interchangeable, but at least Captain America: Civil War rolls them out with Marvel’s trademark humor.

Best of all: Spiderman and Black Panther! I’m looking forward to seeing their movies!

In short: If you like fun dumb blockbusters, you will like this fun dumb blockbuster.

Original article: 

"Captain America: Civil War" Is a Big Dumb Movie You Will Enjoy

Posted in Anchor, ATTRA, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on "Captain America: Civil War" Is a Big Dumb Movie You Will Enjoy

Grit – Angela Duckworth

by Myrna Posted on May 4, 2016

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Grit

The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Angela Duckworth

Genre: Self-Improvement

Price: $14.99

Publish Date: May 3, 2016

Publisher: Scribner

Seller: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc.


In this must-read book for anyone striving to succeed, pioneering psychologist Angela Duckworth shows parents, students, educators, athletes, and business people—both seasoned and new—that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a special blend of passion and persistence she calls “grit.” Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently noted her lack of “genius,” Duckworth, now a celebrated researcher and professor, describes her early eye-opening stints in teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not “genius” but a unique combination of passion and long-term perseverance. In Grit , she takes readers into the field to visit cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, teachers working in some of the toughest schools, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she’s learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers—from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll. Among Grit ’s most valuable insights: *Why any effort you make ultimately counts twice toward your goal *How grit can be learned, regardless of I.Q. or circumstances *How lifelong interest is triggered *How much of optimal practice is suffering and how much ecstasy *Which is better for your child—a warm embrace or high standards *The magic of the Hard Thing Rule Winningly personal, insightful, and even life-changing, Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that—not talent or luck—makes all the difference.

See more here – 

Grit – Angela Duckworth

Posted in FF, GE, ONA, Scribner, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Grit – Angela Duckworth