It's Life, Jim....

  Can you guess who this is? This remarkable woman was descended from English Quakers and born in the USA. Phoebe Ann Moses was born on August 13, 1860 . Her incredible skill at her later chose career first became apparent at the age of eight. Throughout her life, she activated for equal pay for women, and she and her husband gave sums to charities and orphanages.   As a child, her skills were such that she was able to help her mother pay off the mortgage on their farmstead from the money she earned. She was married for fifty years to Frank, who died within weeks of her death, having refused to eat and experiencing deep grief at her passing. After their deaths it was revealed that all their asses had been given to relatives or donated to charities. Throughout her life she was an international celebrity in a traditionally male-dominated sport. She met with royalty throughout Europe and the British Empire. At one stage of her life, she spent six years suing over 55 US ne...

  The Beatles: 'Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr Epstein' Here's a quick quiz for you: I'm going to list a few famous names and I want you to tell me what common theme unites them. Clint Eastwood Audrey Hepburn Marilyn Monroe Bob Dylan Vincent Van Gogh Walt Disney. Did you get the uniting theme? Yes. Each of these now famous entities were informed, by someone who was qualified to know, that they didn't have the looks, attributes, qualities or talent to succeed.  Some were told to 'get a real job' that they 'don't have the looks' 'The world isn't ready for your work' They were 'On the way out" or 'he's got no future in this business.' So many talented critics, so many informed opinions, so many dismissive remarks. It's almost as if it is too easy to be a critic isn't it? Perhaps that is where the problem so many of us face lies. That it is ' too easy ' to be negative. Think about this and ask yo...

Annelise - 'Anne' Frank was captured by the authorities along with her family, hiding in an attic in Amsterdam. Subsequently, all but her father died in concentration camps. The family were betrayed by another local, himself Jewish - who was motivated by a desire to save his own family from the camps.  https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/anne-frank-rare-pictures-1929-1945/ What can we learn from this? We can learn that when people in authority feel empowered to terrorise people, their preferred and most effective weapon of choice is dividing people against each other.  In a tragic triangle of grief and fear, Arnold van den Bergh was as much a victim of this as Annelise Frank and her family. Never forget Annelise Frank and all those who have been victimised by power-hungry sociopathy. [An] investigation, featured on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” identified a surprising culprit: Arnold van den Bergh, a prominent Jewish notary desperate to save his own family.  New York Times

If you have read or heard of Walter Mischel's experiment involving schoolchildren and their likelihood of succeeding in life, it goes like this. The psychologist did an experiment in which he offered marshmallows to a group of schoolchildren to see how long they could resist eating them.  They were asked to resist, on the promise of getting an extra marshmallow if they waited long enough. The majority of kids ate the first marshmallow and were not interested in deferring their gratification. In psychology this is called Hyperbolic Discounting . I'd estimate that 95% of folks always often fall foul of this - willing to take the lesser prize on offer, rather than the greater long-term prize.  Because the kids who deferred did better in their subsequent careers. So this proves that those kids had some kind of innate unlearned, superior attribute. The triumphant (and in my view) inaccurate view gained from Walter Mischel's experiment was    'If you can defer gratificatio...