No Man is an Island

Loneliness is contagious. That’s the conclusion of University of Chicago psychologists. A long-term study of several thousand people showed the more contact you have with lonely people, the more likely you are to going to describe yourself as lonely. Even having a lonely friend of a friend increases your chances. The effect is greater for women and more pronounced through friends than spouses and siblings.

Stephen Goforth

Beginnings & Endings

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. TS Eliot

Life and Death

A newborn is soft and tender,
A crone, hard and stiff.
Plants and animals, in life, are supple and succulent;
In death, withered and dry.
So softness and tenderness are attributes of life,
And hardness and stiffness, attributes of death.

Laozi
Tao Te Ching

Growing Me

What am I doing today that is growing me to make me better tomorrow? John Maxwell

Admiration and Awe

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily reflection is occupied with them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me. Neither of them need I seek and merely suspect as if shrouded in obscurity or rapture beyond my own horizon; I see them before me and connect them immediately with my existence.

Immanuel Kant

Rightness

You're right not because others agree with you, but because your facts are right. Warren Buffett

Talents Squandered

Your unused talents give you no advantage over one who has no talents at all.

Acting.. Within & Without

Your circumstances.. shall not long remain if you but perceive an ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without. James Lane Allen

On Purpose

What are you doing on purpose to grow yourself? And what are you doing on purpose to grow the people around you? John Maxwell

Why bother with the Begats?

Ever wonder why first chapter in the New Testament is a boring list of so-and-so begat so-and-so? Look carefully at the lives of the people listed at the start of Matthew’s Gospel. The genealogy was a knockout punch to the legalist caught up in descendents and lines of purity. Matthew introduces the glorious Messiah.. as a descendent of harlots, murderers and liars. Let it be known that Jesus Christ is the friend of sinners.

He came crashing through the barriers that said, “You have to be born spiritual out of the ‘right kind’ of people.” And today, he comes crashing through barriers you’ve erected too. The barriers that place God in a nice comfortable corner where you can keep an eye on him. He breaks down those excuses that say, “God, you can’t use me. You can’t love me. I’m a sinner.”

God built a monument to grace on that genealogy. That’s why you shouldn’t shy away from admitting your past for what it was. It can be a monument to God’s grace in our lives. That’s when God can use us the most: When we realize who we are, where we come from and how much are lives are dependent on God grace. Just like those people in the genealogy. You stack up a row of harlots and liars and murderers and cheaters bathed in grace and what do you have? You have Jesus. That’s the way God works.

Stephen Goforth

Anger Punishes

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger. Buddha

Opportunity Arrives

You probably won’t hear opportunity knock if you the television set is always on.

How to Lose

You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.

Authority Opinions

Einstein was a great man in science and a very great man in mathematics, but when he got out of his field of competence, which he often did, the result was pathetic. In an article written expressly for the New York Times magazine he said, “It is, therefore, easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees.” The statement is thoroughly false. Indeed, modern science was nourished by the church and by the institutions founded by the church. This includes Princeton University, where Einstein was living when he wrote the article. What this shows is that a man need not be trusted in one field merely because of his competence in another.

D. Elton Trueblood
Philosophy of Religion

Creating God

You may safely assume that you have created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

Fighting.. Again

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. Margaret Thatcher

Planning and Doing.. part 2

You can't plow a field by turning it over in your mind.

The Neutral Zone

Anyone who has ever remodeled a house knows a good deal about personal transitions because such an undertaking replicates the three-part transition process. It starts by making an ending and destroying what used to be. Then there is the time when it isn’t the old way any more, but not yet the new way, either. Some dismantling is still going on, but so is some new building. It is very confusing time, and it is a good idea to have made temporary arrangements for dealing with this interim (“neutral zone”) state of affairs- whether it is temporary housing or a time of modified activities and reduced espectations to make the old housing work. And as the contractors always warn you, remodeling always takes more time and money than new construction. Good advice in regard to transition, too.

William Bridges
Transitions

Holding People Back

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

Booker T Washington

Planning and Doing

You can’t build a reputation on what you're going to do.

Henry Ford

Seeing What's There

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

Mark Twain

Finding Our Way

A Nokia Maps survey named London the most confusing city in the entire world. So, it comes as no surprise that the cities cab drivers, who must memorize some 25,000 streets and thousands of landmarks in order to pass a driving test for the job, have a larger hippocampus than most of us. That’s the part of their brain dealing with spatial relationship. According to University College London neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire, the longer they had been driving, the larger the cabbie’s hippocampus.

Even more curious was Maguire’s finding that the drivers' back side of the hippocampus was large while the front was smaller. Could it be, they are paying a price for proficiency? Is the brain so easily shaped by the demands we place on it that we lose agility in one area by concentrating our efforts in another?

Is this the unintended consequence of our blind obedience to GPS devises, disconnecting us from the world around because there’s really need to pay attention? It’s worth noting that studies have tied a shirking hippocampus to increased risk of dementia.

Perhaps we should take time to enjoy the freedom of getting lost, so we can practice the adventure of finding our way back home. And since we must exercise this skill in the physical world to keep it.. does this mean we must practice finding our way in the spiritual world as well?

Stephen Goforth

Coming to Terms

You can find very moral atheists and very immoral religious people. Both groups haven't come to terms with their belief systems.

All You Got

You better not compromise yourself. It’s all you got.

Janis Joplin

Stretching Your Head

"Becoming involved in new things and keeping your brain active are all hallmarks of activities that would tend to preserve your cognitive skills. And these are all things that searching the Internet for new information really does.”

Neuroscientist Susan Bookheimer in an interview with National Geographic News about a study that appears to validate the view that seeking out new ideas and interests helps to keep the brain stimulated and healthy. UCLA researchers found after two weeks of using Internet search engines, brain scans showed increased blood flow in areas involved in decision-making and short-term memory.

Stephen Goforth

Maturity

You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.

Flanders Dunbar

Work, Love, Dance

Work like you don’t need money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching.

Making and Finding

Wise men make more opportunities than they find.

Francis Bacon

Engaged

Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing.

Phil Jackson

The Difference

The will to persevere is often the difference between failure and success.

David Sarnoff

Gossip

Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you.

Spanish Proverb

Shoulder Chips

When you take responsibility on your shoulders, there isn’t much space left for a chip!

About Becoming

This is a collection of challenges to greater personal growth that I need to hear and perhaps you as well. Welcome to the petri dish called becoming.

Giving Time

When you’re frustrated with people, when they’ve made you angry, it just may be because you haven’t given them enough time.

Randy Pausch

Like They Are

When you are angry, take no action. When you are fearful, know you are going to exaggerate the dangers you face. War demands the utmost in realism, seeing things as the are.

Robert Greene

Making Changes

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

Viktor Frankl

Shadows in the Valley

When walking through the valley of shadows, remember, a shadow is cast by a Light.

HK Barclay

The Last Time

When is the last time you did something for the first time?

John Maxwell

Chances and Opportunities

When pessimists think they're taking a chance, optimists feel they're grasping a great opportunity.

Action Not Talk

When it comes to men that are romantically interested in you, it’s reallysimple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do. - Randy Pausch

Life is Hard

"When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard.' I am always tempted to ask. 'Compared to what?'"

The Placebo Gets Stronger

The sugar pill is putting the drug industry in turmoil.

Double-blind study with randomized placebo-controls is the medical gold standard. The FDA won’t put its stamp of approval on a new drug unless the medication has beaten sugar pills in at least two legitimate trials.

But about half of the medications that fail to make it through late-stage trials are losing out to placebos. Even drugs that have been around for years, are failing follow-up tests (one of them is Prozac). Researchers say the problem is not weak medicines but the placebo effect itself. It’s growing stronger.

There’s now a massive effort underway to figure out it’s happening called the Placebo Response Drug Trials Survey.

We already know that the placebo response is related to cultural differences. William Potter of Lilly's neuroscience labs discovered he could predict whether a drug would pass or not based simply on the location of the study. A decade ago, Prozac worked fine in the US but Valium failed. The reverse was true in Europe. The greater the expectation of effectiveness by the patient, the more powerful the placebo’s effect. In countries where volunteers do not have access to the quality of care given during a drug trial, the more likely they are to respond positively to the luxury care coming from American researchers.

Although the most significant ingredient in any placebo is the doctor's bedside manner, even the color of a tablet can boost effectiveness and help to convince a patient that a placebo is really a potent remedy. Doctors have found that calming blue capsules make more effective tranquilizers than fiery red ones.

In each of these cases, the placebo aids recovery by touching the mind's desire and ability to predict the future. We are constantly parsing the reactions of those around to gauge a more accurate estimations of our fate. A doctor’s tone of voice while delivering a diagnosis or the reaction of someone else to the very same medication we ourselves are taking.

Stephen Goforth

Believe Them

When people show you who they are, believe them.

Maya Angelou

First Things First

When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.... When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.

C.S. Lewis

What You Become

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

Zig Ziglar

Saying and Doing

Well done is better than well said.

Ben Franklin

Actions Speak Louder

What people say about themselves does not matter; people will say anything. Look at what they have done; deeds do not lie. You must apply this logic to yourself.

Robert Greene

Welcome!

Welcome to another fantastic day of opportunity and chance to drink in life! Make sure you get your daily recommended allowance.

What God Wants

We might think that God wanted simple obedience to a set of rules: whereas he really wants people of a particular sort.

CS Lewis

Cultural Relativism

Recognizing the importance of our social environment in generating customs and beliefs, many people suppose that ethical relativism is the correct metaethical theory. Furthermore, they are drawn to it for its liberal philosophical stance. It seems to be an enlightened response to the sin of ethnocentricity, and it seems to entail or strongly imply an attitude of tolerance toward other cultures.

Tolerance is certainly a virtue, but is this a good argument for it? I think not. If morality is relative to each culture, then if the culture in question does not have a principle of tolerance, its members have no obligation to be tolerant.

Not only do relativists fail to offer a basis for criticizing those who are intolerant, they cannot rationally criticize anyone who espouses what they might regard as a heinous principle. Relativists cannot morally criticize anyone outside their own culture. Adolf Hitler’s genocidal actions, as long as they are culturally accepted, are as morally legitimate as Mother Teresa’s work of mercy.

There are other disturbing consequences of ethical relativism. It seems to entail that reformers are always (morally) wrong since they go against the tide of cultural standards. William Wilberforce was wrong in the eighteenth Century to oppose slavery, the British were immoral in opposing the burning of widows in India.

There is an even more basic problem with the notion that morality is dependent on cultural acceptance for its validity. The problem is that of culture or society is notoriously difficult to define. This is especially true in a pluralistic society like our own where the notion seems to be vague with unclear boundaries.

One person may belong to several societies (subcultures).. if Mary is a US citizen and a member of the Roman Catholic church, she is wrong if she chooses to have an abortion and not-wrong if she acts against the teaching of the church on abortion.

This moral Babel.. has lost its action-guiding function.

Louis Pojman
Ethical Theory

Getting and Giving

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

Winston Churchill

You Have Your Truth, I have Mine

Some people.. maintain that morality is not dependent on the society but rather the individual. “Morality is in the eye of the beholder.” They treat morality like taste or aesthetic judgments, person relative.

On the basis of (moral) subjectivism Adolf Hitler and serial murderer Ted Bundy could be considered as a moral as Gandhi, as long as each lived by his own standards, whatever those might be.

Although many students say they espouse subjectivism, there is evidence that it conflicts with other of their moral views. They typically condemn Hitler as an evil man for his genocidal policies. A contradiction seems to exist between subjectivism and the very concept of morality.

Louis Pojman
Ethical Theory

Our Narrative

We have a natural tendency to look for instances that confirm our story and our vision of the world. We can get closer to the truth by negative instances, not by verification.

Nissim Taleb

Changing with Age

We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves.

Lynn Hall

Slow to Anger

Learning to be slow to anger gives us the time and freedom of mind to decide how we should solve our problems or how we should express our anger. Being slow to anger allows us to respond to conviction, to confess our sins of anger, and to rise above hate to forgive those who have offended us.

Mark Cosgrove
Counseling for Anger

Guilt and Blame

No one in a relationship problem is ever totally innocent or totally guilty. With this belief, people can always keep the door open to their own faults without engaging in excessive, guilty-provoking self incrimination. Holding back anger for even a short time and engaging in self-analysis in private has the effect of tempering the expression of anger. Confession alters our goals from changing others to changing the relationship.

Mark Cosgrove
Counseling for Anger

Think About It

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

Birth Order

Everyone takes it personally when it comes to birth order.

Children and parents alike are profoundly affected by the constellations of siblings.. But that doesn’t mean the effects of birth order are as clear or straightforward as we sometimes make them sound. Indeed, birth order can be used to explain every trait and its precise opposite. I’m competitive, driven — typical oldest child! My brother, two years younger, is even more competitive, more driven — typical second child, always trying to catch up!

“Too many parents are haunted by experiences both good and bad that they identify with their birth order,” said Dr. Peter A. Gorski, a professor of pediatrics, public health and psychiatry at the University of South Florida. And that might lead them to classify their own children according to birth order, he went on, which in turn can lead to a sense of identification or even rejection and to “self-fulfilling prophecies.”

“Birth order doesn’t cause anything,” (says) Frank J. Sulloway, a visiting scholar at theUniversity of California Berkeley Dr. Sulloway said. “It’s simply a proxy for the actual mechanisms that go on in family dynamics that shape character and personality.”

Now, of course birth order played into my patients’ patterns, but so did gender and birth spacing and, above all, temperament.

"I wouldn’t discount the impact of birth order,” Dr. Gorski told me. “It sets up the structure of one’s place in relation to others from the beginning, as we learn how to react to people of different ages and different relationships.”

Perri Klass
New York Times

Molded By Our Loves

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

Johann Von Goethe

Retreat

We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.

General Douglas MacArthur

Acting The Part

The late Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack once told me that he was at a loss when he first moved behind the camera, so he simply acted like a director.

The feeling of not being up to the job, the belief that the role is too big, is something every leader has felt. It is evidence that the role is greater than the individual—and thus worth taking on. Pollack made the leader's requisite leap into the unknown, accepting the risk of failure that is the first step in becoming a leader—and he excelled.

That adaptive capacity is the most important attribute in determining who will become a leader. It's also the defining trait of the best actors. Inhabiting roles other than the one most of us think of as self is essential to both. So is the empathy needed to project yourself into someone else's skin.

Like great actors, great leaders create and sell an alternative vision of the world, a better one in which we are an essential part. Philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote that Churchill idealized his countrymen with such intensity that in the end they rose to his ideal. Mahatma Gandhi made India proud of herself. Washington and the other Founding-Fathers shared that great leader's gift of making people believe they could be—and were—part of a great nation. Martin Luther King Jr. had that same genius.

When you consider such towering and theatrical leaders, you realize leadership may be the greatest performing art of all—the only one that creates institutions of lasting value, institutions that can endure long after the stars who envisioned them have left the theater.

Warren Bennis
The Essential Bennis

Lost and Found

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

G. K. Chesterton

The Little Things

Real love motivates the lover to naturally pay attention to little behaviors in the beloved, noticing patterns that no one else does. It can leave the beloved feeling vulnerable.. and yet truly secure and loved.

Stephen Goforth

Let's Make a Deal

Would you rather have $74 in three days or $115 in three months?

That’s the question UK researchers put to more than 40,000 participants through a BBC website. They wanted to know if a person's tendancy to spend or save comes from their understanding of financies or if it the decision reflects the person's overall personality.

Almost half of those responding preferred getting quick cash. This impulsive group turned down an interest rate hundreds of times higher than what they could get from normal investments. The people showing this a desire for immediate gratification was also more likely to indulge in other impulsive behaviors.. like overeating, smoking and even infidelity. The financial impulsivity was a common theme running through their lives.

The study was conducted by University College London and the University of Warwick. You'll find details in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. (The question was actually given in pounds instead of dollars. So the choice was 45 or 70 pounds).

Stephen Goforth

Getting Ahead

The way to get ahead is to overdeliver.

Jack Welch

Angry Smokers

People with anger issues may be more likely to get hooked on smoking cigarettes because they find it soothing. A brain imaging study out of the University of California discovered that nicotine can dull anger responses. Nonsmokers in the study who were more likely to retaliate when they took a placebo than when they were given half of a nicotine patch. Details are in the journal Behavioral and Brain Functions.

Not Worth it

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates

Standing

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Martin Luther King

Skeptics

I ran into skeptics in my philosophy classes who were proud of the fact they were always able to tear down the systems of others. But they were taking the easy way out. Never settling on a viewpoint (or at least pretending they hadn't) allowed them the luxury of throwing rocks but never being a target themselves. What they failed to realize is that life does not allow this option and we all vote with our feet even when remaining verbally neutral. A sense of desperation will shadow those who recognize the situation for what it is.

Stephen Goforth

To Love

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

Feodor Dostoevsky

Preferences

The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart.

Ortega T Gassett

Two Wrongs

Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left.

Always Look on the Bright Side

A negative outlook on life is bad for your health, right? That common sense truth has just gotten a boost from a major study that finds a strong link between attitude and health.

More than 97,000 women age 50 to 79 were surveyed twice with eight years between the surveys. They were all free of cancer and heart disease the first time. University of Pittsburgh researchers found the optimists were 9% less likely to have developed heart disease and 14% less likely to have died during the intervening eight years. Women with a lot of cynical hostility were 16% more likely to die. The relationship was there even after taking into account pre-existing good health habits.

Read more about the federally funded Women's Health Initiative project in the journal Circulation, published by the American Heart Association.

Stephen Goforth

Success & Value

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.

Albert Einstein

Parenting Advice

The billion-dollar industry of quote-unquote educational toys that are supposed to make your baby smarter is a boondoggle. There's no evidence that any of those things make a difference. Children are learning the way that other people's minds work, which is much more important to learn than even letters and numbers. I'm afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them.

Alison Gopnik in an interview with TIME magazine about her book The Philosophical Baby

Our Finest Moments

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

M. Scott Peck

Life's Truth

The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming sweet, bitter…and that is everything.

Anatole France

A Pipeline to Greener Sewers

Researchers in Portugal were able to stress rats until they fell into a vicious cycle of clinging to familiar routines and rote responses to their environment. The rodents became predisposed to doing the same things over and over. Even worse, the parts of their brain associated with goal-directed behaviors shriveled. At the same time, the sectors linked to habit forming grew.

Ever find yourself in a rut, digging yourself deeper? We often don’t recognize when our normal coping mechanisms aren’t working. Instead of trying something new, we bear down and repeat the same routine, thinking that if we just try harder, we’ll make it work.

Maybe it's time to break out of the box.

The study is detailed in the journal Science.

Stephen Goforth

Truth & Love

Truth and love are two of the most powerful things in the world; and when they both go together they cannot be easily withstood.

Ralph Cudworth

The Measure of a Man

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Samuel Johnson

True Friends

A true friend stabs you in the front.

Oscar Wilde

Praise and Criticism

The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise rather than saved by criticism.

Unwrapping Today

Today: one which I’ve never lived before and one which I will never get to live again. The surprise of unwrapping it holds wonder and the privilege of excitement.

Tim Hansel

Persistence

To err is human, to repent divine; to persist devilish.

Ben Franklin

Keep Asking Questions

A few years ago, I got a call (on my communication device) from a Pittsburgh author named Chip Walter. He was co-writing a book with William Shatner (a.k.a Kirk) about how scientific breakthroughs first imagined on Star Trek foreshadowed today’s technological advances. Captain Kirk wanted to visit my virtual reality lab at Carnegie Mellon.

Shatner stayed for three hours and asked tons of questions. A colleague later said to me: “He just kept asking and asking. He doesn’t seem to get it.”

But I was hugely impressed. Kirk, I mean, Shatner was the ultimate example of a man who knew what he didn’t know, was perfectly willing to admit it, and didn’t want to leave until he understood. That’s heroic to me. I wish every grad student had that attitude.

Randy Pausch
The Last Lecture

New Starts

Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.

Carl Bard

Demanding Love

Though I want and need love, I won’t demand it.

Les Carter

Loving Deeply

Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age. but they die young.

Benjamin Franklin

Thinking and Acting

Think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought.

Henri Bergson

Building You Up

Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.

Charles T. Jones

Endings Lead to Beginnings

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

Louis L’Amour

Your Brand of Discontent

There are two brands of discontent: the brand that merely fosters greed and snarling and back-biting, and the brand that inspires greater and greater effort to reach the desired goal. What is your brand?

BC Forbes

Your Angle

There are an infinity of angles at which one falls. Only one at which one stands.

GK Chesterton

Take Care

Take special (and more) time to carefully analyze the unexpected results (successes and failures); that's where the growth opportunities lie.

Disarming Anger and Lust

The surest means of disarming an anger or a lust (is) to turn your attention from the girl or the insult and start examining the passion itself.

CS Lewis

Success Comes

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Henry David Thoreau

Sucess is..

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

Booker T. Washington

Success is..

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

George S. Patton

Need & Growth

Spiritual growth requires the acknowledgement of one's need to grow.

M Scott Peck

Angry Speeches

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.

Ambrose Bierce

Ability and Achievement

…ability does not guarantee achievement, nor is achievement proportional to ability. So it is important to always keep in mind the other term in the equation – the role of chance.

Leonard Mlodinow
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

Let the Winter Pass

Sometimes it is best to lie low, to do nothing but let the winter pass. In such moments, you can collect your self and strengthen your identity.

Planning for Shade

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

Warren Buffett

Some Days..

Some days you’re the pigeon, some days you’re the statue.

Droogling in the Corner

"Just because you're old, that doesn't mean you can't do fun stuff. And you don't want to sit around drooling in the corner. And so it's a wonderful release."

George HW Bush commenting on his skydive on his 85th brithday. The former president plans to take the plunge again when he turns 90 years old.

7 Social Sins

The seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.

Mahatma Gandhi

Voter Fraud in Iran

Was the vote count in Iran manipulated?

The fact there were more votes counted in some parts of the country than people living there is a hint. But there is also the numbers seven and five to consider. What can they tell you about the election? Apparently, more than you would expect.

In legitimate elections, the distribution of numbers is random. But when people make up numbers, they have a tendency (studies have shown) to select some digits more frequently than others.

According to two political science students from Columbia University, there are too many 7s and not enough 5s in the last digits of Iran's vote totals. The digit 7 shows up 17% of the time while the number 5 appears just 4% of the time. That will only happen 4 times out of a hundred.

To give you a comparison, the last US Presidential election vote total shows these digits coming up no more than 14% of the time or and no less than 6%. That's just what you’d expect to happen in a real election 70% of the time.

But Iran also has a problem with sequential numbers. When we make up figures, we tend toward 3-4 or 5-6 or 8-9. We naturally use numbers that are right beside of each other. When you look at the votes from the various Iranian provinces, you notice that adjacent numbers come up too often.

The Columbia students say the chances that the same two issues would come up in a legitimate election is less than .005.

Hiding the truth is quite a difficult task, isn't it?

"You may be sure that your sin will find you out."

Numbers 32:23

Read more on what the students found by clicking here.

Stephen Goforth

Respect People

Respect people for who they are, not for what their titles are.

Herb Kelleher

Everyday Choices

The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.

Charles Swindoll

Re-Framing

Reframe the other side’s accusations as opportunities to talk about problems.

In Different Ways

"I don't consider myself a genius. There are 6.5 billion people in this world and each one is smart in his or her own way."

Moshe Kai Cavalin who earned his astrophysics degree from the East Los Angeles Community College with an A-plus average.. at the age of 11.

The Limits of Reason

Reason is not omni-competent.

Reward for Being Positive

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Herm Albright

Optimism and Opportunity

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Sir Winston Churchill

Wrapped up in a Daydream

Daydreaming may bring you closer to a solution to problems rather than further away. New research shows letting your mind wander will give parts of your brain time to do a little problem solving.

The University of British Columbia study put people in an fMRI scanner. The less subjects were aware that their mind was wandering off a simple task, the more parts of the brain associated with complex problem-solving lit up. Researchers believe this shows the brain is very active when we daydream – more than when we are simply focused on routine tasks. So while letting your mind wander may hurt your performance in the task at hand, it allows you to work on more significant issues and goals.

Details of the study are in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Stephen Goforth

Daily Motivation

People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing -- that's why we recommend it daily.

Zig Ziglar

Holiness

The path to holiness lies through questioning everything.

M.Scott Peck

In God We Trust

"Our Nation's motto - 'In God We Trust' - was not chosen lightly. It reflects a basic recognition that there is a divine authority in the universe to which this nation owes homage."

President Ronald Reagan

Silence

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Martin Luther King, Jr

The Valley

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

GK Chesterton

Giving in the Pinch

The mark of perfect friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that having been given, it makes no difference at all.

CS Lewis

The Good Fortune of Others

One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.

Archibald Rutledge

Good Husbands

One good Husband is worth two good Wives; for the scarcer things are, the more they're valued.

Ben Franklin

The Cause of Overspending

Ample market research shows that people who overspend usually do it to feel good or to feel in control, not because they need the items they buy. Slapping down the plastic makes them feel powerful, secure, able to make their way in the world.

So chiding your spouse, or even just stressing the virtues of scrimping and saving, is going to backfire. The more you talk about that stuff, the more your spouse will feel out of control - the same emotion that drives the indulgences in the first place.

A more effective strategy is to encourage your spouse to own the problem. Keep track of what your household spends, weekly or monthly, and ask him or her to review those accounts. Don't say anything else. That way the choice to cut back is under your spouse's control, making it more likely to happen.

If that doesn't work? You know the time has come to get separate bank accounts.

Finally, you might consider lightening up a little. Marriage is one of life's great blessings. If you think the occasional iToy is expensive, wait until you see how much a divorce costs.

Tyler Cowen in Money Magazine

Obstacles

Obstacles are those frightful things we see when we take our eyes off our goal.

Henry Ford

Self-Deceit

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.
Demosthenes

Feeling Inferior

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Neurosis

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

Carl Jung

In Motion

Never confuse motion with action.

Ernest Hemingway

Wall Building

Never build a wall until you know what you're walling in and what you're walling out.

Adversity and Power

Nearly all men can stand adversity. but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

Abraham Lincoln

Geography in Cognition

“Why do you find, in a music conservatory, a lot of Asian would-be concert pianists but comparatively few Asian opera-singers-in-training? There's a physical limit to how many hours a day a person can sing but not to how many hours one can practice sonata.” (Forbes, May 11 issue).

That’s the view of Richard Nisbett, who outlines his view that I.Q. is more malleable than we typically think in his book Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count.
He says Asian-Americans score higher on the SAT and Asian students perform better on math and science exams than American students because of their culture and educational system. It emphasizes connectedness. Asian schools have a students work out math problems on a chalk board while classmates make suggestions. American businesses recognize this by using different advertising strategies in the US and Asia. Samsung’s message in the US is "I march to the beat of my own drum," appealing to American individualism while the company’s Korea ad campaign focuses on families staying connected.

Stephen Goforth

Doubt and Dogmatism

Most people tend to overcompensate.. people who are riddled with doubts tend to be dogmatists who are never wrong.

John Powell

Additions

Most additions are a result of lack of connectedness and shame.

Paul Myer

The Habit of Excellence

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit.

Aristotle

If Only..

Many people think that if they were only in some other place, or had some other job, they would be happy. Well, that is doubtful. So get as much happiness out of what you are doing as you can and don't put off being happy until some future date.

Dale Carnegie

Getting Acquinted

One of the greatest moments in anybody’s life happens every time he no longer tries to hide from himself but decides to get acquainted with who he really is.

Brain Scans & Personality

Physical differences in our brains indicate our personality type. That’s the finding of a study of brain scans by scientists at England’s University of Hull, Italy’s University of Parma and Washington University in St Louis. They say variations in the size of specific regions of the brain that appear to be linked with certain tendencies that have been a part of us since birth. The differences could explain why person grows up diligent and introspective while another is outgoing and impulsive.

The researches say the study suggests four personality types.

People with smaller amounts of tissue in the brain above the eye sockets (known as the orbito-frontal) had harm-avoidance personalities. They were more pessimist, shy and tended to find comfort in outside sources such as food or drugs.

Novelty seekers were more impulsive and were structurally bigger in the same area.

Reward-dependence personalities had smaller amounts of tissue in the fronto-striatal and limbic areas of the brain. These are more an addictive personalities.

And those labeled Persistence tended to be industrious, hard-working and perfectionist.

The scientists say the differences support the concept that different children will learn in different ways. An approach tailored to the personality of the individual could make all the difference as to whether they are able to grasp the lesson.

Details of the study will be published in the Brain Research Bulletin.

Sweet Goodness

Make good more attractive than evil.

I Didn't Know That!

Many important things are done by folks who simply are too dumb to know they can’t be done.

Miracles

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

CS Lewis

Silence

A man is known by the silence he keeps.

Oliver Herford

Just Do It

The man who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the man doing it.

Chinese Proverb

Fooling Yourself

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.

Demosthenes

Staying in the Game

The man who has no problems to solve is out of the game.

Elbert Hubbard

I Was Wrong

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than yesterday.

Jonathan Swift

Picking and Choosing

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Oscar Wilde

Finding Your Way

Love is the compass of life.

Fearing Humanity

The main thing is life is not to be afraid to be human.

Pablo Casals

Losing Our Way

It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way; and we grasp more fiercely at research, statistics, and technical aids in sex when we have lost the values and meanings of love.

Rollo May

Love & Will

Hard and Easy

Make simple things easy and hard things possible.

Defining Romatic Love

Love is friendship set on fire

Proper Grammar

Love is a verb.

Find a Clear Vision and Stick With It

Six years ago, when Amazon was just getting off the ground, CEO Jeff Bezos was widely criticized for taking on $2.8 billion in debt to make Amazon’s user interface “intuitive to the point of being completely natural.” Once the interface was up and running, investors started “calling for Bezos’ head” for his “unorthodox approach of favoring revenue growth over profit margin.” Bezos can now say, “I told you so.” By passing up short-term profits, he has built a large and loyal customer base. And thanks to customers’ steady purchases, Amazon will soon be virtually debt-free. By no coincidence, Amazon shares are up 26 percent this year. The company’s showing in the worst economy in 75 years offers “an important lesson for tech companies”: Find a clear vision and stick with it. “It’s a very hard road to take. But at least it’s simple.”

Kevin Kelleher
CNNmoney.com

Finding Happiness

A lot of happiness is overlooked because it doesn’t cost anything.

Isn’t My Conscience Enough?

We know something is crooked when we see it - even though we’ve never seen something perfectly straight. We are comparing it to an idea we have in our mind about straightness. Your conscience may be evidence of the existence of “moral straightness” but that does not tell me why I should follow its edicts.

You may slap actions with labels like “good” or “evil” but your conscience, by itself, offers no more than your preferences. The real question is, “How do you move the beyond your opinions as more than your preferences? How do you move into the realm of an ethical "ought"? And you’ll want to get to the “oughts”. Because otherwise, you have no way to condemn the mass murderer who claims he didn’t know any better or has another sets of moral views than you or simply comes from a society with a different belief system than you do.

Perhaps a whole lot of consciences saying the same thing will do it. If society has general rules, is that enough?

It could very well be that your conscience is just your "superego" at work, blandly repeating the rules society has taught you. Leaving you operating out of a sense of guilt.

“So, how do we know what is right, given that “good people” disagree on a number of moral issues?”

While religion is filled with superstition and hypocrisy, there are plenty of exceptions and pointing at people’s inconsistent behavior is not a substitute for addressing the issues. It’s not reasonable to argue that “because the politicians I know behave in a blameworthy manner” therefore “all politicians act immorally.”

What if a society decides it's ok to kill Jews or some other minority? How do we justify taking our society's views and imposing them on others (like Nazi Germany)? Somehow these "rules" must supersede individual societies, so they apply across cultures and generations.

Stephen Goforth

Pros and Amateurs

A lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

Appreciating What We Have

It’s not so much this generation coming up that’s the trouble but human nature itself. Once our expectations are set a certain way, it is difficult to change them, even when we appear ridiculous in context.

Art Divides the Sexes

Both men and women may admire art together but they don’t do it in the same way. A new study out of Spain’s University of Baleares suggests men process beauty on the right side of their brains, while women use their whole brain to do the job. Men concentrate on the spatial aspects of the object- how it takes up space and relates to the world around it. But women go a step further and tie the visual object to language, applying verbal labels what they experience. Details are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The Climb

Life is in the climb.

Toby Mckeehan

Do We Need God if we make Claims of Morality?

“I think good people are good people, with or without a ‘God’ to pin it on.”

A friend wrote that statement to me. Is she right? Is God really a necessary underpinning for our beliefs, if we want to call something good or bad?

People who chose to behave morally without acknowledging God are still behaving in a praiseworthy manner. But their actions lack an underlying justification. One day, their effects will evaporate into the cold cosmos. So what’s the purpose? If we are “all there is” then there’s no compelling reason to behave "morally" ..other than out of self-interest.. so we might enjoy the warm fuzzy feelings it produces or avoid society’s punishment.

If you want to be able to point to the child abuser and say, “This is wrong!” and not just lobby for others to accept your own preferences, then you need to hang your hat on something (or someone) bigger than any single person or culture.

Stephen Goforth

Going Forward

Let us not cease to do the utmost, that we may incessantly go forward in the way of the Lord; and let us not despair of the smallness of our accomplishments.

John Calvin

When Numbers Deceive

Michael Ranney likes asking questions.

Being a professor of education at UCLA, he has plenty of young people around who can act as guinea pigs. For example: For every 1,000 U.S. residents, how many legal immigrants are there each year? How many people, per thousand residents, are incarcerated? For every thousand people, how many computers are there? How many abortions?Few of us spend our leisure hours looking up and memorizing data. But many of us flatter ourselves that we know about these issues. And yet …

On abortion and immigration, says Ranney, about 80 percent of those questioned base their opinions on inaccurate information. For example, students at one college typically estimated annual legal immigration at about 10 percent of the U.S. population (implying 30 million legal immigrants every year). Nonstudents guessed even higher. The actual rate in 2006 was about 0.3 percent. That is, even the lower estimates were more than 30 times too high.

The students’ estimates for the number of abortions varied widely, but the middle of the range was about 5,000 for every million live births. The actual figure in the United States in 2006 was 335,000 per million live births—67 times higher than the typical estimate.

The good news: Many respondents found the correct answers so surprising that they adjusted their political views on the spot.

Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot
The Numbers Game

Marriage: Before and After

Keep your eyes open before marriage. Half shut afterwards.

Benjamin Franklin

Reach and Wisdom

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.

Edward R. Murrow

Filling Suffering

Jesus did not come to explain away suffering or remove it. He came to fill it with his presence.

Paul Claudel

Reading and Trouble

I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Charles De Secondat

TV & Depression

The more a teen watches television, the more likely they’ll become depressed later in life. That’s the finding of a new study detailed in Archives of General Psychology.

It doesn’t necessarily mean TV viewing causes depression. It may just mean people who become depressed as adults tend to watch more TV in their younger years. Excessive TV viewing may be a warning sign.

Nevertheless, the University of Pittsburgh’s Dr. Brian Primack who led the study, believes there is strong evidence that television watching contributes to the problem of depression.

The participants in his study were surveyed while in school during 1995. They were surveyed again in 2002. Those who indicated they battled depression had watched 22 more minutes of TV each day than the other participants in the survey.

The researchers speculate that TV viewing could have cut into their sleep or the time they might have spent in socializing or organized after-school activities. It could have been the shows they decided to watch were disturbing or lowered their self-esteem.

Crying for Reality

It is mentally ill to weep over fakery on the screen and not cry over the reality on the street.

Camus

Love's Gaze

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

How Much

It is not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving.

Mother Teresa

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.

G.K. Chesterton

Never Too Late

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

George Eliot

Swimming and Standing

In matters of style, swim with the current; In matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Thomas Jefferson

Easy Advise

It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.

Aeschylus

Questions, Questions

The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Albert Einstein

One Step

If you're running a 26-mile marathon, remember that every mile is run one step at a time. If you are writing a book, do it one page at a time.

Charles Swindoll

Love's Advantages

If we want the advantages of love, then we must be willing to take the risks of love. And that requires vulnerability.

Charles Swindoll

Doubt and Truth Seeking

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Rene Descartes

Strict Materialism

If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brian, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true.. and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

JBS Haldane

Holes

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Will Rodgers

Materialism

If (my wife who died) 'is not,' then she never was. I mistook a cloud of atoms for a person. There aren't, and never were, any people. Death only reveals the vacuity that was always there. What we call the living are simply those who have not yet been unmasked. All equally bankrupt, but some not yet declared. But this must be nonsense; vacuity revealed to whom? Bankruptcy declared to whom? To other boxes of fireworks or clouds of atoms. I will never believe — more strictly I can't believe — that one set of physical events could be, or make, a mistake about other sets.

CS Lewis
A Grief Observed

Regular Failure

If you are not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.
Woody Allen

Celebrations

If we celebrate what is right in our lives, we gain the perspective to deal with some of the things that are wrong in our lives.

Coveting

In order to make a man covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the think difficult to attain.

Mark Twian

Selling the Brooklyn Bridge

I would rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it.

Will Rogers

Jung on Religion

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among [those] in the second half of life-that is to say over 35-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.

Carl Jung

Speech and Silence

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
Xenocrates

Answered Prayer

I have had prayers answered - most strangely so sometimes - but I think our heavenly Father's loving kindness has been even more evident in what He has refused me.
Lewis Carroll

Jealousy and Friendship

..true friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third.. for in this love “to divide is not to take away”.

CS Lewis
The Four Loves

Overcoming

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies.
Aristotle

Making the Choice

I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude. It is more important than my past, my education, my bankroll, my successes or failures, fame or pain, what other people think of me or say about me, my circumstances, or my position.
Charles Swindoll

Coming Back

When you’re in transition, you find yourself coming back in new ways to old activities. William Bridges