Cool Investment Opportunity in New York: An Islamic Gay Bar

Greg Gutfeld, the libertarian hero of Big Hollywood and Fox's Red Eye, is looking for investors for an interesting project a propos of the new mosque at Ground Zero: an islamic gay bar.

Why? In spite of the protests of the 9/11 victims' relatives, and in spite that it was thought this decision was in extremely bad taste, it was approved by a New York City community board the building of a mosque near the site where the Twin Towers collapsed and +3.000 people died right before the eyes of the entire world. Well, Mr. Gutfeld thinks this is a game we can play, too.

First of all, Dr. sipmac would like to know what GLAAD and NOW think about this. Will they be supportive? If they are afraid of the fatwa (as Dr. sipmac is), will they support Gutfeld (and the LGBT and straight potential customers of the bar), at least under the table? BTW, should women wear burqa-style clothes in the new bar? Could we draw the prophet everytime we drop there if we want it? Could sip watch the Super Best Friends, 200 and 201 episodes from South Park in there? Could Dr. sipmac watch those episodes without censorship? In a nutshell, will sharia law still apply in a muslim gay bar?

Could the Islam culture and religion be reinvented in the meanwhile?

Anyway, count me in.

Jorge Luis Borges, Patron Saint of the Internet? Well, Yes and No.

If there is anybody of whom I can assuredly identify myself as an admirer, without bothering too much by recognizing it, without being ashamed by blushing, that’s Jorge Luis Borges. An Argentinean man of letters, poet, a writer of short stories, reviews, essays and literary critiques; he was born in 1899, died in 1986. Married twice. These are very schematic details of a very interesting life. What happens in between will be discussed here, in the accustomed way of Paul: eclectically, disorganized and incoherently.

Every writer/creator admitted to the Pantheon of the Greatest (immortal, universal literature classic- you know-) normally leaves to the posterity a very powerful image to be remembered for eons: Cervantes had Don Quixote and Sancho, Shakespeare had Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, García Márquez had Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Others leave as a powerful image, not a character but a place: Thomas Moro left his Utopia, the same García Márquez has Macondo; Borges belongs in this second category. We vaguely could remember the affront suffered by Emma Zunz, or the affront perpetrated by Kilpatrick, but we always better remember Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius and the Library of Babel both as two of the most marvelous and at the same time monstrous visions of universal literature.

Talking about the extraordinary capacity that Borges had for playing (and toying, why not?) with ideas might be redundant, but one has to do it. To describe a world, in which Berkelian idealism molds every knowledge, perception, civilization and language (Bite on that bullet, Chomsky!), and in the meanwhile materialism is not a heresy, but the mother of all heresies, that is more than scholar’s trickery: it takes years to metabolize the whole short story and grasp all the ramifications coming out of it. I’m still thinking of Tlön (and Uqbar, and Orbis Tertius, for that matter), and I know I’ll never go too far.

Why? Because we’re not Jorge Luis Borges. Most of us weren’t born in a bilingual family at the crossroads of XIX and XX centuries, nor we didn’t spend our early childhood and adolescence in a big family library, nor we weren’t taken from Buenos Aires to Switzerland and then to Spain; i.e., we didn’t have our whole lives to prepare an erudition comparable to that belonging to the Universal Argentinean himself. Some people is going to elaborate about Infinite Monkey Theorem ad nauseam, but is remarkable indeed, that humanity had to wait some 1950 or 1400 (consider the source) years from the destruction of the Alexandria Library, for someone bold enough to conceive the Total Library: The Library of Babel, in which all the knowledge that was, is and will be exists, and the one that isn’t, too.That is Borges.

By the way, could you imagine the power of the Librarian that could grasp the order of such a library? Well, it would be bigger than a poultry inspector for the Buenos Aires municipal market, for sure. That ‘promotion’, from the post of head librarian, was an indignity our writer had to suffer, a courtesy of the newly arrived peronista regime, as a reminder of what totalitarian regimes, dictatorships and chieftains really mean to literature. But why bother, Borges himself said:

Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.

I insist in things like these, because thanks to them, the Nobel Prize of Literature awards more ideological affinity than real talent. Borges, being basically a conservative, it is said he lost every chance of winning by committing the mortal sin of accepting an award in Pinochet’s Chile (he would regret that later). Besides, what about Kafka? Too much of an offbeat writer, or too much of a posthumous writer? And Joyce? And Proust? It is said that the greatest cable channel that never existed could be made with all the series Fox cancelled. Well, you could easily create quite an anthology with all the Nobel rejects.

Not all is bitterness: Borges could have make mistakes, but his achievements and regrets are securing the place he rightfully deserves in our time. For instance, being named by Wikipedia as his precursor, is a vindication. According to its Spanish article on him, the way the artistic and scientific works were published in Tlön, resembles a lot of that of the Wikipedia (with the same ideological bias uniformity, I might add).

Without fake modesty, I’ve been thinking of this for years, the question was if Borges preconfigured or preconceived the Internet. Nowadays anybody could say yes, being Internet a combination of the encyclopedic project Orbis Tertius, inserted in a Library of Babel (you know, the Labyrinths are kind of a Borges' specialty). What makes me doubt is thinking that the Internet era could not give birth to Jorge Luis Borges. Being born in these times, his energies would have been channeled into developing software, videogames or virtual reality environments. Our real and historic Borges deals a lot better  being considered as custodian and/or Saint Patron of the pre-Internet culture. It was the traditional culture, with its information-flow limitations, and the language barrier partially dissembled by someone who only realized after years that a part of his family spoke English and the other one spoke Spanish. That was the culture that allowed him to visualize in the virtual reality of the human imagination, the virtual reality of the computers.

I strongly recommend the reading of Jorge Luis Borges. FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m not even halfway to read his complete works yet.

Second Epistle to a Philosopher/Neuroscientist

Dear Mr. X:

As you read in Dr. sipmac's previous installment, the quest for truth was the only motivation to write such a letter. sip doesn't know your current whereabouts, but feels it is necessary to share what he found in the highly recommendable "Watts up with that?" website (it is in blog format, but is much more than a blog). Yesterday I talked about that hubris cloud of Anthropogenic Global Warming. According to Mr. Henk Tennekes, former member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, that hubris cloud is bigger than anybody could expect. Always referring to himself in the third person (true to his Internet persona), the sadly pompous Dr. sipmac knows a thing or two about humility, believe it or not. Without further ado, Dr. sipmac presents Mr. Tenneke's very interesting letter of resignation to the Dutch Academy (It is an open letter inside my open letter - talk about a Möbius strip!):
Hermetic Jargon
Farewell Message to the Dutch Academy

As soon as scientists and scholars from different disciplines talk to one another, confusion creeps in. In everyday language, words evoke clusters of associations, suggestions, hints and images. This is why an intelligent listener often needs only half a word. But the words that scientists use in their professional communications are usually safeguarded against unwanted associations. Within each separate discipline this helps to limit semantic confusion, but outsiders have no chance.

Disciplines are divided by their languages. Incomprehensible journal articles and oral presentations, ever-expanding university libraries, endless bickering over the appropriation of research funds, resources, and post-doc positions: The Temple of Science has become a Tower of Babel. A Babylonian confusion of tongues has become the organizing principle. As soon as more than a couple dozen scientists unite around the same theme, another specialist journal is created, comprehensible only to the in-crowd. If this is science, I want to get off.
Many years ago, two members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences tried to call attention to the problem. One was the leading art historian and Director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Henk van Os, the other the retired methodologist of the social sciences, Adriaan de Groot. The two elderly gentlemen arranged a discussion meeting on the peer review system at Academy headquarters. Being an Academy member myself, I eagerly participated. In their introduction van Os and de Groot explained how all disciplines have a tendency to develop their own ‘hermetic jargon,’ the secret language that eliminates the risk of having to discuss the foundations of one’s discipline with the outside world.

Hermetic jargon: what a beautiful neologism! Hermetic: referring to airtight sealing, my Random House dictionary says. Words are at their best when they seed a whole cloud of meanings and associations. In this case my mind reacted instantly, grasping at such concepts as occult science, alchemy, and esoteric writing. Esoteric, accessible to the initiated only, is the qualification given by the philosopher Lucian to some of Aristotle’s writings. Hermetic sealing was the standard laboratory practice of the alchemists. The net effect of hermetic jargon is that outsiders cannot argue with the high priests who wield the words. They can only accept the occult writings in awe.
Looking at the academic enterprise this way, I come across a lot of issues that bother me. The first that comes to mind is that hermetic jargon makes it impossible to conduct mature, scientific discussions of the paradigms, dogmas, and myths that drive each discipline. The claims of the mainstream physics community worldwide, for example, are outrageous. All science is Physics, period, is what these priests claim. All other disciplines, including chemistry, biology, engineering and the earth sciences, are mere derivatives. Physicists glorify their Nobel prizes without ever contemplating whether the Nobel prize system might be based on a nineteenth-century assessment of the world of science. Hermetic jargon is also a very effective means of excluding outsiders from negotiations for research funds. The system by which professional colleagues judge each other’s performance is called Peer Review. Only peers in the same discipline may pass judgment on their colleagues’ funding requests and on the quality of their papers. Only high-energy physicists are allowed to participate in debates concerning the funding of high-energy physics, only micrometeorologists are allowed to review micrometeorological manuscripts. This makes a lot of sense, of course, because outsiders are in no position to judge the intricate technical details of the measurements and calculations involved. But such judgment is only a necessary first step. The key challenge for a meaningful peer review system would be to make explicit the underlying paradigms, and to subject them to scholarly scrutiny. This, to me, should be the essence of the duty of a National Academy, and perforce of each Academician.
Chances for a mature dialogue will improve when hermetic jargon is taken for what it really is: a way to defend barriers. There are plenty of unresolved issues and dilemmas in the interstices between the disciplines. Almost nobody dares to take a peek, but Gregory Bateson, the originator of the Kantian idea that Mind and Nature form a Necessary Unity, did. Angels Fear is the title of the book his daughter Margaret compiled after he died. The subtitle of that beautiful but rather messy book is Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred. The term ‘sacred’ should not be construed as referring to theology, but to the central problem of all epistemology: how can we know anything, how can we evaluate, who are we to make judgments? In Kant’s own words: “Reason suffers the fate of being troubled by questions which it cannot reject because they were brought up by reason itself, but which it cannot answer either because they are utterly beyond its capacities.” Yes, only fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

In oral presentations, to give another example, it would behoove the speaker to speak openly about the questions looming behind the research successes, behind the never-ending propaganda for scientific progress. I myself tried this a few times, but to no avail. In my induction speech for the Academy, in January 1984, I introduced the limited predictability of the weather as a prime example of the uncertainties associated with the sensitive dependence of nonlinear systems to initial conditions and to mismatches between Nature and the models we use to compute its evolution. I told my audience that the prediction horizon, in 1950 estimated by John von Neumann at 30 days, in fact is only three days on average. I dwelt only a little on the implications of this for the myth of endless progress in science. Apparently, meteorology is approaching the no-man’s land between the unknown and the unknowable, I said. This was enough to alert the cognoscenti. The moment the discussion period following my lecture started, the famous astronomer Henk van de Hulst stood up from his chair in the front row and said: “Henk, that is a sermon, not a lecture. Sermons are not appropriate in this Hall.” And the President, David de Wied then, closing the meeting and thanking me for my speech, said in front of the microphones: “Henk, I really don’t understand what you said, and I believe I don’t want to understand either.”

The two Academy members who had arranged the meeting on peer review apparently had concluded that voluntary changes in the peer review system were very unlikely. They opted for a direct confrontation. They proposed to amend the review system such that a number of colleagues outside the discipline concerned would have to participate in the evaluation of proposals for research funding and debates on the desired direction of research programs. Ask psychologists to look over the shoulders of meteorologists, involve theologians in the evaluation of astronomical long-term planning, let sociologists and engineers review each other’s professional papers, and so on. As soon as you do that, hermetic jargon loses the rationale for its existence.

It shall come as no surprise that these thoughts were torpedoed the moment they reverberated through the august Academy assembly hall. Everyone knew instantly the very idea was a land mine under the science establishment. Nobody understood that the proposal was rather modest in the sense that bureaucrats, politicians, and taxpayers would be excluded, and that the proposal in fact could be construed as reinforcing the power of the scientific nomenclature. The current practice is that spokesmen for each discipline negotiate directly with bureaucrats in government agencies, and refuse to be drawn into evaluations of the claims of other disciplines.
So all hell broke loose, right there in the meeting, the scene suddenly similar to that in a typical Knesset session, with Academicians jumping up, shouting, and cursing. Within half an hour, the President of the Academy, Pieter Drenth this time, stepped in, stating ex cathedra that the current review system was functioning well enough, despite minor flaws. He closed the meeting, and the Executive Board of the Academy decided to abort the idea altogether.

Following in the footsteps of van Os and de Groot, I have tried to fantasize about the fierce battles that might result if their proposal were put into effect. The central myth of cosmology and astrophysics, for example, is that the human mind is more powerful than the Universe. Stephen Hawking writes: when we discover a theory that unifies gravity and quantum mechanics, we will (I shudder as I write this) “know the Mind of God.” Martin Rees, then the Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom, wrote a book called Before the Beginning, subtitled Our Universe and Others. Indeed, it has become common in astronomy to talk about Multiple Universes, an oxymoron if I ever saw one. Unfortunately, mainstream theology continues to propagate a similar myth, i.e. the stupid idea that one can talk with insight, and write scholarly publications, about God himself. That, in my mind, is an unforgivable epistemological fallacy. Readers not versed in the Bible might find it useful to read the story of Moses stumbling into a psychedelic thorn bush in Exodus 3. Moses hears voices and asks: “please tell me your Name, so I can tell my people who sent me.” The Voice answers: “I am whoever I want to be, that should be good enough for you.”

Being an engineer myself, I would be delighted to participate in a debate between engineers and sociologists. In both cases, the interaction between the discipline and society is central to the field of inquiry. Take cell phones. The technology is straightforward, but the sociology is complex. Engineers are servants to society. Their work, which uses physics, chemistry, and countless other disciplines, ought to be analyzed by sociologists. I confess that I know no sociology to speak of, but I know enough about engineering to claim that something must be amiss if the best book on technology I know of is Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

As to my own position, I can illustrate that with another incident at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. I was elected into the Academy in 1982, and assigned to a small group of scholars not bound to a specific discipline, the Free Section. This group was the envy of several others, because the much coveted expansion of disciplinary sections was hindered by our presence. There were 100 chairs in the Science Division at the time, and several other sections claimed to need more. The powers behind the scenes argued long enough for the Executive Board to cave in to the demands to eliminate the Free Section, and lodge its members into disciplines. I was tentatively assigned to the physics section, which did not appeal to me at all. So I wrote to the then President, Piet van Zandbergen, saying that one could imagine putting me in the Engineering Section because I was raised as an engineer, in the Physics Section because my area of expertise is turbulence theory, which is a branch of theoretical physics, and in Earth Sciences, because that would correspond to my current position. Instead, I wrote, I would prefer to be assigned to the Theology and Philosophy Section because of my growing interest in epistemology. The President, eager to avoid any written record of the nuisance I had created, called me one night by phone, saying: “Henk, philosophy belongs to the Arts and Humanities Division of the Academy. The division between them and the Science Division is laid down in our Charter. You cannot cross that Wall however much you want to. That Wall cannot be breached.”
But one can step outside. I did. There is light out there.

Now, how simple can science be? Is it up to epistemologists to decide? Mr. X, tear this wall of words apart!

Very truly yours,

Dr. sipmac (Dr. Doom according to Paul Maršić)

Lisa Simpson, do something about it!

Once upon a time, a $ 21 talking Teen Barbie dared to say “math is hard”. Then she got immediatly lambasted for perpetuating the unfair sexist stereotype of women being not interested in studying math or (gasp!) sciences. That was 1992, not the dark ages, by the way. Lisa Simpson then took action in two ways since then: her first bold move was to produce her own doll Lisa Lionheart in 1994. A few seasons later, she disguised herself as a boy to keep on learning real math in 2006. What an intrepid girl, eager to learn and question the so-called conventional wisdom!

Now in 2010, we have the brand-new inaction figure Berkeley High’s School Governance Council, daring to say “science is hard for blacks and latinos. Let’s cut science classes for good!”

Oh, the humanity! As Bob Parr once said, the Governance Council is looking for new ways to celebrate mediocrity. The children aren’t scoring too well in science? Then kill the lab classes and use the money for something more “critical” (!). Level the students to the lowest common denominator, what a great education policy.

Now the Berkeley School Board has the last word in this highly educational mess/travesty.

“The full plan to close the racial achievement gap by altering the structure of the high school is known as the High School Redesign. It will come before the Berkeley School Board as an information item at its January 13 meeting. Generally, such agenda items are passed without debate, but if the school board chooses to play a more direct role in the High School Redesign, it could bring the item back as an action item at a future meeting.”

Lisa, you are Dr. sipmac’s most-hated Simpson character, since the time you rejected 12 million dollars from Monty Burns on the grounds of being “bloody money”, because he got his fortune back by destroying the environment. Did it ever occur to you that you could have used that money to fix the harm done? You may have a high IQ in your mind, but your common sense must be somewhere else.

To be fair, from time to time you do the right thing instead of annoy your viewers. Now, this is the time to do it again, since you’re more known than Dr. sipmac. People pay more attention to you. And there’s plenty to denounce: incompetence, patronizing racism, and yes, sexism, too. What is meant to happen at Berkeley school couldn’t be more damaging to the youth and the ideals of education if they were announcing they were going to teach alchemy instead of science lab classes.

Dr. sipmac has ranted

Image taken from luiscordero.com

---

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Still sick - but fighting!

As I told you before, I'm pretty sick these days. Broncopneumonia, and the doctors scared me to death. They warned me a lot, telling me I should rest a lot and take a gazillion medicines. Well, even today I'm not feeling strong enough to resume my normal activities, and, if I take the doctors' advice seriously, it would be unwise to even try now, too.

It's been a period on time when I found with great disappointment that the American Healthcare Reform is still alive and well (they should ask ME how I get my medical attention through this rotten system - as I told someone before, I'm always on the verge of taking legal action against my medical company to get some healthcare - pretty darn funny, huh?), and found great pageant activity lately, both in North and South America. Sorry, but that activity has been soaked with lethal doses of stupidity.

Gone is the goodwill and simpathy I had for Carrie Prejean. Look, she's a celebrity wannabe, and she (and her manager, whoever-might-be) doesn't know how to deal with a scandal, or the press, or a soft interview! She attempted to leave the interview she had with Larry King. Larry King! She is selling a book, too. The photo of the cover makes her look like a martyr, something apparently she likes to be. If she wants a career, she should know better.


Diana María Salgado shamelessly abused the Colombian Constitution so she could travel to Cartagena and do the National Pageant! Puh-leeze! And I'll never forget the judge. He deserves punishment, too.

In the neighborhood, a country is sinking rapidly in a hole of blackouts and water rationings. A country soaked in oil, but it has to import energy from countries with less energy potential! The simple solution: a call for war against the neighbors!

This week, South Park simply S-U-C-K-E-D. If you've been watching the show for years, you should know a couple of things about its creators. Its ideology is far from liberal. They aren't conservatives, either. They are somewhat libertarian. But "Dances With Smurfs" is plain laziness. You even laugh watching the episode. You know they like to shock, and more than once they prefer to be funny instead of being fair. This time is the former, beacause they mocked the legitimate concerns of a popular movement. They are not helping anybody but the people that spent the entire summer trivialising and mocking the movement while burning trillions of dollars in yet-to-be-seen stimulus.

Oh, and Britney Spears Twitter account has been hacked.

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43 Things Results - You May Want to Try!

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I'm a

Lifelong Learning Healthy Builder

50 Things Every 18-Year-Old Should Know

Mr. John Hawkins from www.rightwingnews.com allowed Dr. sipmac to post this article on this website. Should the words "right wing" scare the living hell out of you, please refrain from dissing this (And you wouldn't be so open minded as you think you are). Take a closer look and then tell me if this piece does not appeal to every person. Bonus: I will work in a spanish translation asap. Enjoy.

1) "If you are buying something that you will use often and for a long time, never go cheap. You'll end up replacing it sooner or paying more in maintenance costs than if you had spent more on good quality in the beginning. Plus, you'll enjoy the nicer product throughout its lifetime, rather than cringing every time you use something that is falling apart." -- bretts
2) Don't spend money on a credit card that you can't afford to pay back. The interest and late payments can put you in a hole that can take you years to pay back.
3) Compound interest is your friend. Saving even a relatively small percentage of your income each year, starting at 18, can leave you in much better shape by the time you're ready to retire.
4) If you're working with someone who can be bargained down on a price, it seldom hurts to try. The exceptions may be someone of exceptional talent, someone you're going to have to work with on a regular basis, or someone whose help you're going to need in a timely manner.
5) Try to keep enough cash to pay your bills for at least six months in reserve. It will make your life immeasurably easier if your car breaks down, you have a surprise medical expense, or you get an opportunity to get a fantastic bargain.
6) Dogs are fantastic animals. They deserve to be called man's best friend. But, if you are under the impression that you just need to buy a collar and a bag of dry dog food every month and you're set, you're in for a rude awakening. Dogs tend to be much more expensive and time consuming than you'd think.
7) "Don't have any children or get married until you can support and love yourself first." -- D-Vega
8) "Don't trade your vehicle in on a new one just a couple of years after buying it. Pay it off and ride it until (the wheels fall off), all while putting that car payment in the bank." -- The_Muck_Man
9) College is a lot more work than high school and your job will be a lot more work than college was.
10) Start looking for a new job BEFORE you quit your old job.
11) Don't take any job that only pays commission unless you're either an expert salesman or ready to spend months working without pay to gain the skills you need to become an expert salesman.
12) Ideally, you should choose something you love to do so much that you'd do it for free and find a way to make it into a career.
13) When asking for a salary, always have a figure you want in mind -- and then ask for significantly more than that number. That way, you may get more than what you want and even if you don't, you have a better chance of getting the amount you had in mind than if you had blurted it out right off the bat.
14) There's no shame in taking any honest job.
15) Getting fired or laid off isn't the end of the world. To the contrary, a lot of people, myself included, have moved on to bigger and better things after being laid off or fired.
16) If you're not happy with the job market, the government, or the schools in your area, remember that you can always move to another city or another state. Lots of Americans do just that every year.
17) "I wish that I had known to check the oil in my vehicles and to have changed it regularly. It would have saved a lot of money that I spent on repairs -- directly due to my lack of changing the oil per the mechanic." -- Ann H.
18) Lefty loosey, righty tighty. Turn it to the left to loosen it and to the right to tighten it.
19) Don't ever open a hot radiator cap or you can get seriously burned.
20) Here are 3 keys to keeping a reasonably clean house: don't leave any dishes in the sink overnight; every time you have a full load of clothes, wash 'em, and take out the trash every time the can is full. You do those things, wipe up your messes, and vacuum when the floor gets filthy, and you'll keep things reasonably neat.
21) If you use a computer even semi-regularly, it's worth your time to take a typing class.
22) It's not enough to buy a gun and stick it in a drawer like a lucky talisman. You need to learn to use the gun.
23) When you move, sell, throw away, and give away as much as possible or you'll just end up moving boxes from one closet, where they have been sitting for five years, to another closet, where they'll be sitting for the next five years.
24) Don't ever loan your friends money if you want to keep them as friends. After all, if they were good with money and were likely to pay you back in a timely manner, they probably wouldn't need the loan in the first place. If they really need the money, you want to help them, and you can afford it -- just give it to them.
25) Women should never allow a boyfriend to take naked pictures. If it's on film, you shouldn't be surprised if it goes public in one form or fashion after a break-up.
26) When men have a problem and they tell you about it, they want to know how to fix it. When women have a problem and they tell you about it, they just want you to listen.
27) If you ever get arrested, don't say anything until you talk to a lawyer.
28) If you don't know the agenda of the people you're getting your news from, then you don't have the information you need to know if what they're telling you is true.
29) Government is a necessary evil. It's best to keep its tentacles out of your life and out of our society as much as possible.
30) "When you're 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you; when you're 40, you don't give a darn what anybody thinks of you; when you're 60, you realize nobody's been thinking about you at all." -- Daniel Amen
31) Trust your instincts. They're usually right.
32) If you think a doctor's wrong, don't hesitate to ask for a second opinion. Your health is vitally important and doctors make mistakes just as often as anyone else.
33) Don't ever say anything that may offend someone who is going to be serving you food. You never know what they may stick in it when you're not looking.
34) If you get into a business deal with someone who goes to unusual lengths to convince you of how honest or Christian they are, watch your wallet and make sure you have an iron clad contract. They "doth protest too much."
35) "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." - Jim Rohn
36) If you want to do something exceptional, don't expect anyone to believe you can do it until you've done it. Unless you're already perceived as exceptional, most people won't believe in you. That's doubly true for the people who know you best and have therefore seen you at your most mediocre, like your parents, family, and friends.
37) If you don't feel like you're being treated fairly by a company, don't hesitate to ask for a manager. Oftentimes, a manager has gotten to where he is in a company because he is good at pleasing customers like you in the first place.
38) "You are not invulnerable and you are not going to live forever. You can (make) mistakes at 18 that you will have to live with for the rest of your life." -- Don_cos
39) Nobody owes you a living.
40) You are not a victim.
41) If you just assume that every conspiracy theory is wrong without even examining it, you will be right 99.99% of the time.
42) "It's likely that whatever challenges you have faced in your life currently could have been avoided but some better decisions upstream." -- Tony Robbins
43) At a minimum, keep a basic "to do" list, a schedule, and a budget.
44) "Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better." -- Pat Riley
45) "If you want your life to have impact, focus it! Stop dabbling. Stop trying to do it all. Do less. Prune away even good activities and do only that which matters most. Never confuse activity with productivity. You can be busy without a purpose, but what's the point?" -- Rick Warren
46) Ironically, successful people tend to fail a lot more than unsuccessful people. They also tend to ask a lot more questions.
47) When you consider Christianity, keep in mind this classic quotation from C.S. Lewis, "If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?"
48) You beat 50% of the people by just showing up. You beat another 40% by working hard. The last 10% is a dogfight in the free enterprise system.
49) There are at least six key areas of your life: health, career, romantic, social, money, and religion. If you neglect any one of those areas, it will harm you in the other areas and keep you from being as happy as you can be otherwise.
50) When trying to decide between two closely matched alternatives, always have a bias towards action. In the long run, it'll lead to your having a lot more experience, great stories, and a richer, fuller life.
Source: http://www.rightwingnews.com/

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