CARLOS Tiger without Time

See you later,
CARLOS, Tiger without Time

Japan is the world’s most innovative country, according to a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company. It gets the top score in an index, ranging from 1 to 10, which is based on patents per person. The report casts light on the factors behind innovation. Based on a survey of 485 senior executives around the world, it indicates that the top determinants are the technical skills of a country’s workforce and the quality of its telecoms and information-technology infrastructure. It also suggests that, despite India’s success in IT services, China has better conditions for innovation. The return on innovation is greater in middle-income countries like Mexico than among richer nations.

* May 17th 2007
From The Economist print edition

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
Oscar Wilde

All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
Oscar Wilde

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
Oscar Wilde

Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
Oscar Wilde

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
Oscar Wilde

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Oscar Wilde

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
Oscar Wilde

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
Oscar Wilde

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Oscar Wilde

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
Oscar Wilde

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
Oscar Wilde

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
Oscar Wilde

The end of a relationship is a universally painful and intense experience, one that is followed by a period of mourning and healing. Everyone recovers from a bad breakup differently, but all can benefit from thinking about the process in terms of spiritual healing. So put away that voodoo doll and try these 10 spiritual tips for getting over a breakup and moving on with your life.

Tip #1: Don’t Blame God
It’s tempting when you have lost a love-even if you were the instigator of the breakup-to channel feelings of loneliness and abandonment toward the heavens, blaming God for bringing you together as a couple only to have the relationship fall apart. In the period just after the breakup, though, try to turn toward God or your higher power for support and direction, rather than turning away from your spiritual self.

Tip #2: Clean Up the Mess
Cleaning house can be a spiritual metaphor for inner cleansing. When you’ve just endured a breakup, that process becomes even more meaningful as you gather up your ex’s clothes, books, music, and other stuff. It might be painful to face the memories that are attached to those things, but once they’re out the door — either in the mail or the dumpster, as the case may be — you’ll be surprised at the refreshing sense of soul-cleanliness that you feel.

Tip #3: Write it Out
After a breakup, the heart and soul often feel overwhelmed with emotions and memories. Pouring your anger, hurt, confusion, sadness, regret, or even relief or apology into a heartfelt letter to your ex is a great first step toward healing yourself of these feelings. Then, make a ritual of getting rid of the letter instead of sending it. Either put it in a special private box, tuck it into a journal, or toss it into a crackling fire.

Tip #4: Try Something New
“Starting over” is a scary phrase associated with the aftermath of a breakup, but it can also be an exciting concept. Take a class to help you learn a new skill or hobby, learn a new language, or consider a new career direction. Trying something new is a way to symbolically demonstrate to yourself that the world is a big place, and new opportunities in life-and love-are always available.

Tip #5: Relish Your Solitude
Being on your own is intimidating at times, but it is also a spiritual gift. Many forms of meditation are practiced in solitude, and practices from yoga to tai chi can also be done solo. Create a space in your home that feels like a sanctuary to you. This will allow you to infuse your alone time with spirituality and remind you of the pleasure of your own company.

Tip #6: Love Your Life
No matter how bleak your life might feel after a breakup, there have to be some positive aspects that you’re not questioning or struggling with. Think about what you love about your life — it can be a meaningful job, a group of supportive, funny friends, a loving family, a comfortable home, anything that simply makes you happy. Make a “gratitude list” and keep it on your night-table or somewhere else nearby so you can look at it instead of glancing wistfully at pictures of you and your ex.

Tip #7: Don’t Be Afraid of Tears
Not to put too fine a point on it, but breaking up is hard to do. Crying is allowed, and so are anger, resentment, and fear about the future. Give yourself permission to fully feel the pain of the loss, because only when you are honest with yourself about your feelings can you begin the healing process.

Tip #8: Take Care of Yourself
The stress of a breakup can leave your body feeling fragile and upset. Tend to your physical well-being to restore your feelings of self-worth, confidence, and attractiveness. Start a satisfying new workout program, cook simple, healthy meals, or treat yourself to a soothing aromatherapy massage to reconnect with your inner beauty.

Tip #9: Believe in Yourself
Breakups aren’t great for the self-esteem. If you did the breaking up, you might feel like a callous jerk. If you were dumped, you might feel un-loveable. Sit down in a quiet place with your journal or a piece of paper and write yourself reminders of what you like about yourself. That’s not to say there aren’t lessons to be learned from every breakup, but you should come away feeling like the good and special person that you truly are.

Tip #10: Begin Again
At some point after your breakup, you will be ready to re-enter the dating scene. Watch your emotions carefully, and your intuition will tell you when you are ready to let go of your past relationship for good and open yourself up to the possibility of finding love again. When you make that decision, you’ll be ready to head out-or online-with a renewed and refreshed spirit.

* Holly Lebowitz Rossi is the relationships editor for Beliefnet.com, the premiere faith and spirituality website. Holly is also a freelance writer, specializing in religion, whose work has appeared in Newsweek, Spa Finder, Sojourners, the Washington Post, and NPR’s “All Things Considered,” among many other publications. 

Kitty was full of energy. She enjoyed dancing, learning, debating politics, and going out with her friends.

Genovese moved to Kew Gardens (from Connecticut) in the spring of 1963 and landed a job as a barmaid at Queens’s neighborhood about five miles east of Kew Gardens (Queen, New York) Considering the hours Catherine Genovese worked. She purchased a car for the commute, a small red Fiat.

Unseen by Genovese, he got out of his car and ran into the parking lot, pulled out his knife, and hid in the shadows.

Genovese started screaming when she saw him.
He stabbed her again, in the chest, stomach and throat. He then raped her and stole her keys, makeup, a bottle of medicine, and forty-nine dollars.

The rest of the country was astonished, too, but for different reasons. The slaying was horrible, to be sure, but what particularly outraged people was the neighborhood’s seeming lack of concern as it happened.

Two weeks after the killing, The New York Times chronicled the attack in an article titled “Thirty –seven who saw murder didn’t call the police.”

Millions of readers nationwide came away with the perception that the last moments of Kitty Genovese’s life were some sort of public theater, viewed live by people who were at best horrified but too afraid to get involved; at worst, entertained.

Six days later, for breaking into a home and stealing a television, Moseley was arrested.
He admitted to murdering Kitty Genovese … in addition to two other women before that: Barbara Kralik (15) and Annie Mae Johnson (24). He also confessed to multiple rapes and robberies.
Moseley and introverted father of two, was 29 and worked a perfectly respectable job as a machine operator in Westchester County. Little did his family know he dad a secret history of robbery, rape and murder.

Academics saw a more complex problem at work, which they termed the Bystander Effect, or Genovese Syndrome.
The fewer the number of witnesses, sociologist maintained, and the better off a victim of a violent crime is. In an emergency, people have a tendency to look for answers from others; if no one takes charge, or even seems worried, the assumption is that nothing is really a miss, and the more people present during a crime, the more responsibility each individual can hand off to others.

still we have the Genovese syndrome in United States or, still worse, it has been increased? 

See you later,
CARLOS, Tiger without Time

In the middle of a battle in Fallujah in April 2004, an M80 grenade landed a foot away from Fred Ball. The blast threw the 26-year-old Marine sergeant 10 feet into the air and sent a piece of hot shrapnel into his right temple. Once his wound was patched up, Ball insisted on rejoining his men. For the next three months, he continued to go on raids, then returned to Camp Pendleton, Calif.

But Ball was not all right. Military doctors concluded that Ball was suffering from a traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic headaches, and balance problems.

In January of last year, the Marine Corps found him unfit for duty but not disabled enough to receive full permanent disability retirement benefits and discharged him.

Ball’s situation has taken a dire turn for the worse. The tremors that he experienced after the blast are back, he can hardly walk, and he has trouble using a pencil or a fork.

Ball’s case is being handled by the Department of Veterans Affairs-he receives $337 a month-but while his case is under appeal, he receives no medical care.
 

He works 16-hour shifts at a packing-crate plant near his home in East Wenatchee, Wash., but he has gone into debt to cover his $1,600 monthly mortgage and support his wife and 2-month-old son. “Life is coming down around me,” Ball says. Trained to be strong and self-sufficient, Ball now speaks in tones of audible pain.
 

Now an extensive investigation by U.S. News and a new Army inspector general’s report reveal that the system is beset by ambiguity and riddled with discrepancies. Indeed, Department of Defense data examined by U.S. News and military experts show that the vast majority-nearly 93 percent-of disabled troops are receiving low ratings, and more have been graded similarly in recent years.

What’s more, ground troops, who suffer the most combat injuries from the ubiquitous roadside bombs, have received the lowest ratings.

· Summarized of U.S. News / World Report, April 16, 2007

Young people today are more narcissist than their parents –dangerously so, a new study concludes. San Diego State psychology Prof. Jean Twenge first warned about the burst in self-love –and its likely side effects of depression, anxiety, and cynicism- in her 2006 book, “Generation Me”

For the latest study, Twenge and her team analyzed over 16,000 college students’ responses to the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, finding a jump in narcissistic scores between 1982 and 2006

“Someone who has high self-steem has confidence in individualistic areas but also tends to value good relationships with other people. Someone who’s narcissistic is missing that piece about other people and relationships.”

“I love Me”. The slogan of YouTube is “Broadcast Yourself.”

The Pew Research Center asked young people, what are your generation’s most important goals? Eight in said getting rich, while only 4% said becoming more spiritual.
YOU ALSO CALL THIS “GENERATION CRUDE”. What does sex have to do with narcissism?

“Narcissists favor short-term relationships. That may help explain why hookups have become so popular. I cannot say for sure that one causes the other. All I can say is these are two trends that go along with each other.”

“There are a lot of challenges faced by young people that older people did not have to face… We should cut young people a little slack.”

Source: Summarized of U.S. News &World report, March, 2007

It would be a lot easier to enjoy your life if there weren’t so many things trying to kill you every day. The problems start even before you’re fully awake. There’s the fall out of bed that kills 600 Americans each year.

There’s the early-morning heart attack, which is 40% more common than those that strike later in the day. There’s the fatal plunge down the stairs, the bite of sausage that gets lodged in your throat, the tumble on the slippery sidewalk as you leave the house, the high-speed automotive pinball game that is your daily commute.

Other dangers stalk you all day long. Will a cabbie’s brakes fail when you’re in the crosswalk? Will you have a violent reaction to bad food? And what about the risks you carry with you all your life? The father and grandfather who died of coronaries in their 50s probably passed the same cardiac weakness on to you. The tendency to take chances on the highway that has twice landed you in traffic court could just as easily land you in the morgue.

Shadowed by peril as we are, you would think we’d get pretty good at distinguishing the risks likeliest to do us in from the ones that are statistical long shots. But you would be wrong. We agonize over avian flu, which to date has killed precisely no one in the U.S., but have to be cajoled into getting vaccinated for the common flu, which contributes to the deaths of 36,000 Americans each year. We wring our hands over the mad cow pathogen that might be (but almost certainly isn’t) in our hamburger and worry far less about the cholesterol that contributes to the heart disease that kills 700,000 of us annually.

We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.
Sensible calculation of real-world risks is a multidimensional math problem that sometimes seems entirely beyond us. And while it may be true that it’s something we’ll never do exceptionally well, it’s almost certainly something we can learn to do better.

Part of the problem we have with evaluating risk, scientists say, is that we’re moving through the modern world with what is, in many respects, a prehistoric brain. We may think we’ve grown accustomed to living in a predator-free environment in which most of the dangers of the wild have been driven away or fenced off, but our central nervous system–evolving at a glacial pace–hasn’t got the message.

We dread anything that poses a greater risk for cancer more than the things that injure us in a traditional way, like an auto crash.

We similarly misjudge risk if we feel we have some control over it, even if it’s an illusory sense. The decision to drive instead of fly is the most commonly cited example, probably because it’s such a good one.

In the next Diagram we can see the relation between accidents and diseases in U.S.

Just as important is to remember to pay proper mind to the dangers that, as the risk experts put it, are hiding in plain sight.

Most people no longer doubt that global warming is happening, yet we live and work in air-conditioned buildings and drive gas-guzzling cars.

Most people would be far likelier to participate in a protest at a nuclear power plant than at a tobacco company, but it’s smoking, not nukes, that kills an average of 1,200 Americans every single day.

* Summarized of TIME, Dec. 2006

The movie, which depicts the brave stand of 300 Spartans against a marauding army of hundreds of thousands of Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BC. “Is about as violent as ‘Apocalypto’ and twice as stupid,”

The Iranians, who presumably don’t screen many Mel Gibson movies, were nonetheless even more offended. The movie is aimed at “humiliating” Iranians, who are descendants of the ancient Persians.

300 is “part of a comprehensive U.S. psychological warfare aimed at Iranian Culture” And this was the headline in the Ayan No newspaper: HOLLYWOOD DECLARES WAR ON IRANIANS.

Source: Summarized of Newsweek, March 2007

Juan M. Cervantes arrived in the United States from Mexico in 1996, and then he married a woman who had it his wife Catherine (Bronx born) had trouble understanding what she was reading.

Cervantes researched the issue and became so immersed that he ultimately founded the learning disabilities support center of New York in Park Chester, the Bronx.

Juan Cervantes teaches computer skills and holds motivational workshops. Both adults and children are encouraged to attend.

Juan and his wife Catherine emphasize the importance of nutrition in combating learning disabilities.

“The most important thing,” Juan says, “is to know that you can always better yourself. You can always grow more. Always think positive.”

Source: Summarized of Daily News, April 24, 2007

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
Ernest Hemingway

But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
Ernest Hemingway

Courage is grace under pressure.
Ernest Hemingway

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
Ernest Hemingway

Cowardice… is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.
Ernest Hemingway

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.
Ernest Hemingway

Defense is the stronger form with the negative object, and attack the weaker form with the positive object.
Ernest Hemingway

Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.
Ernest Hemingway

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.
Ernest Hemingway

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
Ernest Hemingway

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary – public authority, just cause, right motive.
Ernest Hemingway

Questions
1) What does life mean?

2) Is there a word you prefer to “happiness”?

3) Does love for a pet dog constitute true love, by your definition?

4) Do you find that having children adds meaning to life?

5) Where do you think all these neo-atheists like Darwin are coming from?

Answers

1) Perhaps the two strongest candidates for the answer to the question are happiness and love. But one of the terrible things about the word “happiness” is that it is so utterly feeble. It evokes the idea of people cavorting around with manic grins on their faces.

2) Aristotle, of course, uses a term, which is better, translated as “well-being.” The term I like is “fulfillment.”

3) No. Because it’s a biologically different species, it doesn’t realize itself, doesn’t flower into its own being, through that.

4) I find that for a left-winger like me, the problem is that either your children out-left you or they become fascists.

5) I suppose it is a reaction to various ugly types of fundamentalism. I’m entirely with Dawkins in condemning redneck fascist from Texas to the Taliban. But the trouble with Dawkins is that he thinks that’s what religion is.

Source: Summarized of New York magazine, April 22, 2007

Note: Terry Eagleton is literary critic and Professor of cultural theory at the University of Manchester in England. Also Terry values his catholic background very much.

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Oscar Wilde

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.
Oscar Wilde

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Oscar Wilde

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
Oscar Wilde

A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.
Oscar Wilde

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Oscar Wilde

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde

A true friend stabs you in the front.
Oscar Wilde

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
Oscar Wilde

Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.
Oscar Wilde

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
Oscar Wilde

All art is quite useless.
Oscar Wilde