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Articles from FSB Authors | Selfgrowth.com
- Desire as an Evolutionary Tool - by Submitted on Mar 18, 2008 from FSB AuthorsMany traditions treat desire of all kinds, but sexual desire in particular, as negative, as something that must be suppressed. Desire is certainly complex. It can overwhelm us and interfere with our better judgment. In this society, we are conditioned to be ruled by our desires: desires that are ...
Views: 1235(1 vote) - Tantra: The Science Of Self-Exploration - by Submitted on Nov 27, 2007 from FSB AuthorsWhat Is Tantra? The word Tantra is becoming increasingly familiar, as a practice embraced by celebrities such as Sting, Woody Harrelson and Scarlett Johanssen, to name a few, and as an exotic, somewhat laughable approach to sex, as depicted in movies and on television - from ''American Pie'' to ...
Views: 2020(1 vote) - Multitasking Virus In Our Classrooms - by Submitted on May 20, 2008 from FSB AuthorsA few weeks ago, I returned to the classroom of Dennis Dalton, the most important college professor of my life. From the back of an amphitheater seating several hundred students, I realized how much things had evolved at Columbia and Barnard. The lecture hall was now equipped with a wireless ...
Views: 1718(2 votes) - The Dangers of Radiation - by Submitted on Dec 22, 2008 from FSB AuthorsThe most serious problem with the widespread use of CAT scans is the radiation these devices leave in our bodies. CAT scans are not simple chest X-rays, which deliver only a small amount of radiation. Instead, they expose the patient to a significant amount of radiation, and radiation in ...
Views: 754(1 vote) - The Energy of the Financial Meltdown - by Submitted on Mar 29, 2009 from FSB AuthorsWe are in a time of financial crisis. People are anxious. People are seeking solutions. People are scared. With all of this activity, tremendous bursts of energy are being expended, some positive but mostly negative. But the energy that we project into the cosmos is not an isolated event. Your ...
Views: 1040(1 vote) - The Great American Heart Hoax: Economic and Political Implications - by Submitted on Jan 25, 2009 from FSB AuthorsCardiovascular care in America is spiraling out of control. We are now spending more than one hundred billion dollars a year for treatment and management of cardiovascular catastrophes (heart attack, stroke and diseases of the vascular system). This extraordinary amount of money is spent on ...
Views: 1222(1 vote) - The World's Biggest Pollution Factory - by Submitted on Jun 10, 2008 from FSB AuthorsThe coal that has powered China's economic growth . . . is also choking its people. -- Elizabeth C. Economy At the root of many of China's air-quality problems is its heavy dependence on relatively high-sulfur, low-quality coal for everything from electricity generation and industrial ...
Views: 781(2 votes) - 7 Ways to Inspire Innovation - by Submitted on Mar 09, 2010 from FSB AuthorsThe recently introduced Apple iPad is the latest wowing of the world by the pioneering computer company. Taken in totality, with its iPhone, iPod, MacBook laptops, and the original Macintosh computer itself, Apple's ability to hit innovation home runs has changed technology -- and the way people ...
Views: 1372(6 votes) - Understand the Smoking-Diabetes Link - by Submitted on Nov 12, 2009 from FSB AuthorsCarole Willi, M.D., of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and colleagues conducted a systematic review and analysis of studies describing the association between smoking and the incidence of diabetes or other glucose metabolism irregularities that covered thirty years. The data was ...
Views: 1727(4 votes) - Boone Pickens' Energy Crusade: Prophet Or Con Man? - by Submitted on Jul 30, 2008 from FSB AuthorsT. Boone Pickens has broadcast his way right into the middle of a presidential election debate about United States energy policy. Americans are upset about $4 a gallon gasoline, and the iconoclastic oilman has bought a lot of air time to tell us what he thinks about the situation. Pickens' ...
Views: 1004(1 vote) - Education Accountability Version 2.0: A Letter To The Next President - by Submitted on Nov 03, 2008 from FSB AuthorsDear Mr. President: Your education platform was filled with noble generalities. I suppose you thought you couldn't get more specific because the No Child Left Behind Law is increasingly unpopular and unworkable, and there is no agreement about how to fix it. It is an issue that doesn't lend ...
Views: 1155(1 vote) - How Do Pirates Dress For Halloween (And What Do They Do?) - by Submitted on Jul 17, 2008 from FSB AuthorsHow do pirates dress for Halloween? They can't strap on a peg leg, prop a plastic parrot on their shoulders, apply an eye patch and wrap a red bandana around their scurvy heads. That's no fun at all -- not for a pirate on Halloween. That would be like we landlubbers wearing a suit to a ...
Views: 1179(1 vote) - Which Candidate Would Make The Better Pirate? - by Submitted on Oct 15, 2008 from FSB AuthorsAmerica, in a ritual that it undertakes every four years, is about to elect a president. Our choices for the highest office in the land are a man who has done absolutely nothing in two years in the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama, and a man that has done too much for too long in the U.S. Senate, John ...
Views: 722(1 vote) - Satan's Utensil, Or "My Palm Is My Pilot . . . " - by Submitted on Nov 03, 2008 from FSB AuthorsCharles Saatchi, Donny Deutsch: name any flog-master you care to. In my opinion they're second best, though, compared to the holy ones, those who bedeck Williamsburg's streets with the word of G-d. Suddenly last summer, out for a bike jaunt, my mind did a double take as I stopped to answer a ...
Views: 849(1 vote) - A New Context for Schooling - by Submitted on Nov 09, 2008 from FSB AuthorsEconomic survival is not the only factor that we must consider as we rethink education goals for the twenty-first century. To better understand how all of our schools must adapt to new realities, we need to explore three fundamental transformations that have taken place in a very short period of ...
Views: 746(1 vote) - A New Dialogue for Our Children's Future - by Submitted on Nov 09, 2008 from FSB AuthorsWe are not going to transform education by simply replacing one administration with another or even by passing new laws. Instituting better assessments is the one most important change we could make tomorrow that would have the greatest impact, but before we can consider a host of other policy ...
Views: 810(1 vote) - A New Job Requirement For Authors - by Submitted on Jun 10, 2008 from FSB AuthorsWho knew that one needed to be so thoroughly tech-savvy to be an author? I’m not just talking about knowing how to create chapter headers in Word (I don’t but I fake it well enough) or being able to change your printer cartridge. Nowadays, you have to know how to ...
Views: 829(1 vote) - A Tricky Treat . . . - by Submitted on Oct 24, 2008 from FSB Authors"Cemetery." Not a great way to start a conversation with a stranger, is it? Today all things deathly are impolite. But it wasn't that way in years gone by. Passing was something to be embraced. For two hundred years, urban American Christians were buried in churchyards. Then things got ...
Views: 730(1 vote) - America's Greatest Gunmaker?: Nobody You Know - by Submitted on Oct 07, 2008 from FSB AuthorsWho was the most important gunmaker in American history? There must be at least half a dozen -- and maybe up to a score if you thought hard about it -- leading contenders. Let me get into the spirit of things by naming, off the top of my head and in no particular order, Oliver Winchester, Samuel ...
Views: 665(1 vote) - American Presidents And Energy: A Challenge Of Leadership - by Submitted on Jul 28, 2008 from FSB AuthorsEvery American president has wrestled with the question of how best to fuel the country's transportation and other energy needs. Even Abraham Lincoln chose to reject an offer from the King of Siam (the same one of Broadway musical lore) to send over Asian elephants who could propagate here and ...
Views: 1085(1 vote) - Comrade Lenin: Alive and Well - by Submitted on Jul 15, 2008 from FSB AuthorsThe New Russia may have finally embraced free-market capitalism, but Vladimir Lenin, founder of Soviet communism and one of the great murderers of the twentieth century, still casts a long shadow across the Russian landscape. Indeed, when I journeyed to Russia with my family last summer to ...
Views: 768(1 vote) - Daughters in Danger - by Submitted on Apr 28, 2009 from FSB AuthorsAs you may recall from your own teenage years, separating from one's parents is a vital, and healthy, part of growing up. All well and good. But the question is this: as your daughters move away from YOU, who exactly are they moving TOWARDS? And more importantly, are those people taking them ...
Views: 1231(1 vote) - Debunking The Myth Of The Oil Crisis - by Submitted on Sep 24, 2008 from FSB AuthorsThe opening years of the 21st century are marked by milestones in the world of oil: the war in Iraq, the Shell reserves downgrade, Hurricane Katrina, and the breaking of the once unthinkable $100 per barrel barrier. Many have seized on these events as evidence that we are crossing the threshold ...
Views: 1360(1 vote) - Do We Have To Talk About The Lapel Pins Again? - by Submitted on Sep 30, 2008 from FSB AuthorsWhen it comes to international issues, a lot of Americans aren't on top of the details. In 2007 only 36 percent of Americans could name Vladimir Putin as the leader of Russia, although maybe he's raised his profile here recently by pummeling Georgia into the ground. Let's not even speculate ...
Views: 927(1 vote) - Genealogy for the Rest Of Us: A Writer's Guide to Diving into Family History - by Submitted on May 12, 2009 from FSB AuthorsI am not a genealogist. I am a storyteller. The difference? Well, I’ll tell you a story. In the spring of 2006, I was racing against a loudly-ticking generational clock, trying to find as many living relatives as I possibly could before their advancing age caught up with them. I was hoping ...
Views: 1029(1 vote) - Hiring the Right Skill Set And Motivating the Millennials - by Submitted on Nov 12, 2008 from FSB AuthorsIn an economic downturn, employers need to be even more careful with their hiring decisions. And recent graduates from some of the best schools may not have the skills that matter most in the new global knowledge economy. In researching my new book, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our ...
Views: 612(1 vote) - How To Talk Like A Pirate, Me Hearty -- A Tutorial - by Submitted on Sep 03, 2008 from FSB AuthorsSo you wants to parley like a pirate, do yee? Thar be certain matters to attend to afore yee can tack about and talk like a proper tar. Some landlubbers ain't suited for the seafaring life. If yee play golf on Sundays, unless yee cheat most grievously, yee will never speak like a salt. If yee ...
Views: 2940(1 vote) - Hurry Down Sunshine - by Submitted on Nov 18, 2008 from FSB AuthorsThe writing of a memoir is a tricky proposition, and not only because the form has been dragged through the mud by its own practitioners in recent years. Philip Roth has a passage in his novel The Counterlife about "the strange bind" in which the family members of a writer find themselves: ...
Views: 616(1 vote) - Is It Intelligent To Outsource Intelligence? - by Submitted on Jun 18, 2008 from FSB AuthorsAnother reality in the post-9/11 growth of intelligence analysis capability is outsourcing. We have outsourced the management of billlion-dollar technical collection programs, and we have contracted intelligence analysts. The National Reconnaissance Office is a lot more than an office; may ...
Views: 1012(1 vote) - John McCain, Postmodern Candidate - by Submitted on Oct 14, 2008 from FSB AuthorsOne night after the presidential election of 2000 in November and before the ultimate resolution of that election by the United Stages Supreme Court in mid-December, as I lay in bed listening to Nightline, I heard James A. Baker III explaining to Ted Koppel why it would be wrong to supercede the ...
Views: 773(1 vote) - Lawyers And Pirates - by Submitted on Jul 21, 2008 from FSB AuthorsI have been surprised since writing my novel, "SILVER -- My Own Tale As Told By Me With A Goodly Amount Of Murder", by a particular question that readers have asked and the frequency with which it has been asked. The question assumes different forms, but it is chronic: "What is the difference ...
Views: 845(1 vote) - My Father, the Witch Doctor - by Submitted on Dec 15, 2008 from FSB AuthorsOne day, back in the early 70s, my father suddenly discovered that he had the astonishing ability to talk to the dead and heal the sick (for real!). By day, he was a successful interior decorator with clients ranging from the Presidents of Cuba and Haiti to assorted mobsters and the illicit ...
Views: 767(1 vote) - Prologue (Pharmakon Book Excerpt) - by Submitted on Jul 24, 2008 from FSB AuthorsI was born because a man came to kill my father. If he hadn't showed up with a gun in his pocket and bad thoughts in his head, I wouldn't exist, much less have a story to tell. This tragic footnote to my conception left me feeling as if I had three parents: a father, a mother, and a ...
Views: 858(1 vote) - Prologue (Walking on Walls excerpt) - by Submitted on Dec 09, 2008 from FSB AuthorsIt was late July. The summer mangoes had dropped from the trees and were lying rotting on the ground, ripped open by feasting bugs and birds. Their intoxicating, sweet smell mixed with the heaviness of the nightblooming jasmine. This languid perfume created a thick, rarefied atmosphere that at ...
Views: 677(1 vote) - Rejection is Just an Invitation to Resubmit - Always RSVP - by Submitted on Apr 26, 2009 from FSB AuthorsI started writing songs when I was seventeen. This was in the Sixties when life seemed like one opportunity after another, waiting to be fulfilled. I played in a band, and we did original songs, inspired by Dylan, The Beatles, etc. I wanted to record, found a studio through an ad at the back of ...
Views: 1107(1 vote) - Seven Thoughts on Our First Hell-Ride Through Filmmaking - by Submitted on Apr 12, 2009 from FSB AuthorsWhat follows was written from the IGNORANCE of having only produced and directed one film, and the ARROGANCE of having only produced and directed one film. 1. Every day is the Cuban Missile Crisis: Your world could blow up. Shooting an independent film is a radioactive adventure more volatile ...
Views: 1011(1 vote) - So Whose Fault Is It When Candidates Fudge On The Federal Budget? - by Submitted on Sep 30, 2008 from FSB AuthorsYou may have the sneaking feeling that there's something the presidential candidates aren't telling you about the federal budget. And you're right. Here it is: Every expert who looks at the federal budget uses the same word to describe it: unsustainable. The federal government is $9.5 trillion ...
Views: 722(1 vote) - Tee-Time And Me-Time - by Submitted on Sep 27, 2008 from FSB AuthorsMothers live in a permanent state of guilt. How come men don't? Mothers are guilty not just about whether they work and how much they work and should they work and where they work. But they are also guilty about what they do with the few moments they can call their own. A classic example of the ...
Views: 776(1 vote) - The Apostles Of Clean Fighting: Who Put The Rifle Into The National Rifle Association? - by Submitted on Oct 07, 2008 from FSB AuthorsWhy is the National Rifle Association called the National Rifle Association? It seems an odd choice considering the organization's commitment to the Second Amendment, which refers broadly to "arms," not rifles, that require keeping and bearing. Wouldn't it make more sense for the NRA to call ...
Views: 760(1 vote) - The Cast: The Chronicles of Narnia Prince Caspian book excerpt - by Submitted on May 07, 2008 from FSB AuthorsFamily Reunion Making a full-scale motion picture like Prince Caspian is a journey unto itself -- not only a physical one that took hundreds of filmmakers thousands of miles across two hemispheres, but also a spiritual and emotional voyage for the film's family members. With mothers and ...
Views: 1042(1 vote) - The No Complaining Rule - by Submitted on Jun 26, 2008 from FSB AuthorsOne Simple Rule is Having a Big Impact. I didn't invent the rule. I discovered it -- at a small, fast growing, highly successful company that implements simple practices with extraordinary results. One day I was having lunch with Dwight Cooper, a tall, thin, mild-mannered former basketball ...
Views: 2135(1 vote) - The Obama Effect - by Submitted on Feb 11, 2009 from FSB AuthorsDuring a recent segment on an ESPN sports show, Andre Iguodala of the Philadelphia 76ers was being interviewed by one of the show's reporters. As the hour wound down, the in-studio host asked Mr. Iguodala, "Why did you do the interview outside? It's so cold, and you're not even wearing a hat." ...
Views: 1044(1 vote) - The Story is in the Details - by Submitted on Apr 26, 2009 from FSB AuthorsI am often asked, "What sort of research went into your story to bring it to life so vividly?" The truth is months or even years of research. If I do not acquaint myself with the ins and outs of the periods I write about, how will I take readers back in time with me? So where does an author ...
Views: 992(1 vote) - The Ten Commandments of Parenting Teenagers - by Submitted on May 12, 2009 from FSB AuthorsAs we all know and regret deeply, kids aren't born with instruction manuals informing us of the intricacies of how they work. As parents, our only option is to learn as we go. When our kids were babies, we learned to nap when they napped, to put valuables up on the high shelves, and that m&ms ...
Views: 1422(1 vote) - Their License To Do Ill - by Submitted on Aug 13, 2008 from FSB AuthorsSince the founding of the Moral Majority Coalition by Jerry Falwell in 1979, members of the American conservative movement and what has become its electoral vehicle, the Republican Party, have presented themselves as proponents of what they like to call "family values" and as leaders in the ...
Views: 866(1 vote) - Three Presidents And The Rifle - by Submitted on Oct 07, 2008 from FSB AuthorsThree of our presidents have been particularly fascinated by rifles: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. But all for different reasons. Washington was what we would call an "early adopter" of rifle technology. As early as the French and Indian War (1754-1763), when he ...
Views: 670(1 vote) - War In Iraq, George W. Bush - by Submitted on Oct 03, 2008 from FSB AuthorsAccomplished? On May 1, President Bush triumphantly proclaimed the end of combat operations, and he did it with a theatrical flourish. Attired in a Navy flight suit, the former Air National Guard trainee (Bush had actually cut short his flight training to participate in a political campaign) ...
Views: 654(1 vote) - What's up Wittgenstein? - by Submitted on Feb 22, 2009 from FSB AuthorsWherever I go in the English speaking world someone will say something in words that are completely familiar but leave me scratching my head wondering "What the hell is he talking about?" Take the expression "What's up?" The traditional answers are often one of several that have been easy to ...
Views: 924(1 vote) - Why Did You Write Your Book? - by Submitted on Jan 08, 2009 from FSB AuthorsIt never fails. On every author's book tour, every interviewer, every moderator, every talk show host always asks the same question, especially when the room goes silent and they need to rescue the interview -- "Why did you write your book?" This is a failsafe method to get the author chatting ...
Views: 616(1 vote) - Why I Wrote Hurry Down Sunshine - by Submitted on Dec 05, 2008 from FSB AuthorsIt was with a feeling of trepidation that I first sat down to write Hurry Down Sunshine. I don't think of myself as a memoirist in the usual sense of the word, and Hurry Down Sunshine is not about my childhood or my "awakening" or the "turning points" in my life. It's about a dramatic event that ...
Views: 690(1 vote)