Ingrid of the Jungle

A Dr. sipmac translation (original text taken from Tijera Press)

"This should never have happened. Everything was so crystal clear in my mind: Larry King, Oprah, then the Nobel Prize, best-selling books about my captivity in Spanish, English and French, a major motion picture in Hollywood, the Awards ceremony, negligence lawsuit against the Colombian state, the presidency, and then ... " Perhaps I exaggerate, but more than one of these things certainly thought Ingrid Betancourt during and after his captivity. The story of her mighty tantrum originated because she didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize says a lot.

Accustomed as we are to their miscalculations, it took us completely by surprise the obvious: writers Serge Scotto and Eric Stoffel, teamed up with illustrator Richard di Martino and prepared between July 2008 and December 2009 the perfect blow to the arrogance and ambition of the former hostage, a comic satire of her well known behavior in and out of captivity. A simple idea, but it never ocurred until now in this proud land of "humorists".

Currently scheduled to go on sale one week before the captivity memoir "There is no silence that does not end", the graphic satire and is already an Internet sensation. The web forums are full of prospective buyers, willing to buy a Spanish version.

Yet to be known is if the parody will be successful in France, where there was certainly a lot of backlash, and saturation with everything having to do with Ingrid Betancourt; but is almost certain that it could be completely successful in the country that loves to hate her. Meanwhile, she continues with its strong levels of unpopularity, which I doubt can be alleviated with an exclusive interview with reputed writer and intellectual Héctor Abad. Even Larry King at its best couldn't have been able to rescue her image. Another gaffetastic miscalculation.

We should recall that her first miscalculation was to enter a combat zone in spite of the warnings.

Best Beatles-Video-Lip-Synch-Evah!

I'm still looking for somethin' else. But never mind, today is the best Beatles Video Lip-sinch-You-Tube-Video feature ever! Something else is coming, you just watch out!

For Giancarlo

 

Phineas and Ferb - Rules of the Cyberspace Road Public Service Announcement

What else should I say? These smart kids say it all! Of course, they are Phineas and Ferb. Hopefully this will be available in other languages. Be careful of what-choo doin' on the internet!



First when Dr. sipmac saw this, he said: "I know what the sipmac ensemble is going to do today!" Enjoy.

El Gran Varon: Willie Colon’s story of Simon is 20 years old

sipmacrants! is still celebrating. Today Dr. sipmac's special guest will be Dominic Ambrose, with a spectacular post about a groundbreaking song of the 80's: El Gran Varón/The Big Man. Thank you very much, Mr. Ambrose by letting Dr. sipmac repost your article here again on sipmacrants! Without further ado, Dr. sipmac proudly presents:

El Gran Varon: Willie Colon’s story of Simon is 20 years old

Twenty years ago, one of the great New York salsa artists, Willie Colon, released an album containing what would become an enduring classic of salsa music, as powerful for its message as for its fantastic style, the story of Simon, “El Gran Varon.” Willie Colon (pronounced Colón) was born in New York City in 1950, and became a headliner at venues like the Corso Ballroom and the Cheetah when he was still in his early twenties. Throughout the 1970s and 80s he built up a loyal following for his work with the Fania All Stars and artists like Hector Lavoe. This album, entitled “Top Secret” was his last for the Fania label, and it features Colon with his trombone and distinctive vocals, and his own orchestra, Legal Aliens. The song “El Gran Varon” was not thought of as a potential hit, or at least it was not initially presented as a candidate for such, perhaps because of the risky territory it covered. It was a song about AIDS and the isolation that homophobia and stigmatization bring.

Salsa is a powerful style, capable of expressing a great variety of emotions with its wide repertoire of rhythms, dynamics and tonalities. It has a basic structure but many origins, from African rhythms, to the clubs of Puerto Rico, Cuba, New York and the Caribbean as a whole. The New York style, of which Willie Colon was a leading exponent, was nurtured in its formative years in the jazz world of Manhattan in the forties and fifties (that is, the West Forties and the Nineteen Fifties), where jazz bands and salsa bands would sit in on each other’s gigs. Improvisation and idiosyncratic flair were highly prized elements there, as evidenced by the elaborate solos and characteristic free-form piano bridges.

Willie Colon’s trombone was a part of this tradition but in this song, his innovation is so much more: in the words of a timely, modern and tragic story within the framework of a traditional salsa structure. To my knowledge, he was the first well known artist, singing either in Spanish or in English, to allude so specifically to the horrifying epidemic that was devastating young victims in cities like New York, San Francisco, Miami and San Juan. It was not without its risks. If Caribbean culture has a famously vibrant gay element to it, quite apparent to those with even a passing acquaintance with the culture, it is kept in line and overshadowed by a virulent sense of honor that insists on presenting a macho image to the world. Add to that the stigma attached to this disease, not only in Puerto Rican culture, but in American culture as a whole during that period. It all could have very easily damaged Colon’s career.

Yet, he believed in this song, and with his distinctive metallic tenor voice and the perfect timing and sound of his superb orchestra, Willie Colon renders an unforgettable performance. El Gran Varon became perhaps Colon’s greatest hit and a staple of his concerts. In later years he updated the chronology, moving Simon’s dates of birth and death up seven years to 1963 and 1993. Perhaps he did this to emphasize the ongoing nature of this epidemic, but to my mind, the song is indelibly associated with the 1980s, with the terrible panic and despair of those first few years of epidemic, and of the emotional release that this song brought. Something beautiful could come out of this tragedy, some lesson learned, some community created, all in a great song to dance to and to celebrate life!

The song was recorded in 1988 and became part of Colon’s live show, then the album was released in June of 1989 and El Gran Varon quickly became a staple of salsa radio and disco. Part of its success might be the way that this performance elicits an emotional response without being maudlin, prissy or preachy. It is a difficult balancing act, and the many unsuccessful attempts to duplicate the success of Willie Colon with this material attest to that fact. A film was made in Mexico in 2002 based on this song, “Simon, el Gran Varon.” Unfortunately, this film is widely considered unsuccessful and cartoonish. Other artists have done covers of the song El Gran Varon, but nothing equals the original..

The lyrics were written by Omar Alfanno. When you read the words, you get a sense of just how much story has been packed into this one song. It is finely crafted, and quite effective in Spanish, drawing on many familiar sources, from the Mexican proverb about the bent tree to the Bible proverb about casting stones, and even giving elegant form to the lemonade adage attributed to the actress Joan Collins. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to reproduce the smooth prose of these lyrics and remain true to the words at the same time. Here is my English translation, as faithful to the original as the language will allow:

El Gran Varon, The Big Man

In a hospital room,
At 9:43, Simon was born.
It was the summer of ’56,
He was the pride of Don Andrés,
Because he was a boy.
He was brought up like everyone else,
With a tough hand and severity, he never talked back.
When you grow up, you’re going to study the same b.s. like your father.
Listen good, you have to be a big man.

Simon left the country, and far from home he forgot all about that sermon.
He changed his way of walking, he wore a skirt, lipstick and carried a handbag.
People say that one day his father went to visit him by surprise. Wow, what a mistake!
A woman walked by and spoke to him: Hello, daddy, how are you?
Don’t you recognize me? It’s me, Simon! Simon, your son, the big man!

Chorus:
You can never correct nature, the tree that is born bent will never straighten its trunk.

But he cared too much what people would say.
He never spoke to his son again, and he left him forever.

Don’t complain, Andrés, don’t complain at all.
If it’s lemons that fall from the sky then learn how to make lemonade.

Then as the years passed, Andrés thought better,
and he became furious that his son never wrote to him.
Finally he received news about whatever happened to his son,
And Andrés never forgot the day that he received that sad call.

In a hospital room,
With a strange disease
Simon died.
It was the summer of ’86,
And at the bedside of patient number ten,
Nobody cried.

You have to have pity, and quit the moralizing,
Those who are free of sin should cast the first stone.
And he who can never forgive, has the most certain fate,
Of living with his bitter regrets in his own private hell.

Dr. sipmac supports South Park, even if it upsets him once in a while.

Related articles

• Cruising Through Caribbean Music (repeatingislands.com)
• Héctor Lavoe, Singer of Singers (repeatingislands.com)

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)

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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• Psychology of Salesman, Consumer and The Skeptic (socyberty.com)
• Ask the Readers: Financial Advice for an 18-Year-Old? (getrichslowly.org)