By it I see everything else - CS Lewis

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it but by it I see everything else. CS Lewis Essays, The Search for God, what are we to make of Jesus Christ

Capitalism vs Communism

The problem with capitalism is, its people using people.
The problem with socialism/communism is the reverse.

- Socialism, People, Communism, Capitalism,

Interview/Article on Getting the right outcome or highest and best

That was weirdly fun. Apple was a very crazy place. It was very much a leadership-focused company. It was very aggressive. Sometimes you feel like what they're doing is a little crazy. They really reach for things, but they also really believe in focus. One of [Steve Jobs’] famous quotes was, "Why screw up two things when you can only get one thing right?"

Apple did a couple things really, really well. Focus. Make it as good as you possibly can, and have confidence in your engineering decisions and expertise.

When I talk to I*** engineers, the expertise here is great, but they're talking about asking customers what they think about this and that — as opposed to coming up with the best possible thing.

There's a lot of trying to figure out what the market needs, and what's the best trade-off between performance and cost, as opposed to what the best thing is we could possibly do. The interesting thing about the best you can do is that helps you push the envelope.

- apple, development, Technology, leadership,

An alternative to university education(from ZOHO.com)

A larger proportion of students than ever attend college in the United States, yet the top colleges have become more and more selective. It’s an age of scarcity and an age of plenty. College is also an increasingly more expensive proposition, with tuition alone around $10,000/year at state colleges and over $30,000/year at private institutions. It’s a huge leap of faith; to take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt as a teenager, to study something that may or may not still prove interesting to you four years down the road, let alone relevant in a world where technology “disrupts” industries on a regular basis. This choice doesn’t impact the student alone. For many parents, having “boomerang kids” has become the new normal, delaying their retirement so that they may support the (now fully grown) baby birds that have returned to the nest.

Of course, the arguments for attending college are well-worn axioms. College graduates experience significantly lower levels of unemployment; the pay gap between college grads versus those without a four-year degree has risen every year since 1980. Some studies have even shown that the decision not to go to college has an opportunity cost as much as $500,000 over the course of a lifetime. When compared to the average debt a student assumes (now hovering around $37,000), the cost becomes negligible.

And there are the less tangible benefits that also play a role in the decision to go to, and stay in, college. There is a pervasive cultural narrative that college is the only way to acceptably enter the middle class, a narrative propagated by higher-ed PR campaigns. Colleges also provide an easy opportunity to socialize and network, a must when personal referrals make you twice as likely to be interviewed and 40% more likely to be hired. College graduates are also more likely to vote, have better health, and report higher levels of happiness than those who have only a high-school degree. There are also the experiential factors to consider; college can be transformative for some students, allowing them to discover new passions and instilling a life-long love of learning.

Of course, college is not a magical panacea. Colleges often fail to train students in the real-world skills they will need at professional jobs, with as many as 4 in 10 students graduating without the higher-level reasoning skills required to be successful in white-collar jobs. Even in booming areas such as software programming, college Computer Science curricula have the effect of driving away a lot of potential programmers. As a consequence, the industry then meets its demand for programmers either through immigration or various training programs that are increasingly common in cities like San Francisco and New York.

We at Zoho don’t believe that the only path to success resides in the traditional four (and for many students, six) year degree. College can measure many things, to be sure, but as an increasing number of companies are starting to find (we’re looking at you, Google!), GPA and test scores are poor predictors of long-term success. We understand that all people have to be trained for their jobs, and that most of that training happens (surprise!) on the job. So, we cut out the middle man. Why should we ask students to bet on us and our industry, if we aren’t willing to do the same?

It was out of this realization that Zoho University was born. We decided that students don’t need to take on crippling debt, spend a few years at school, and acquire arbitrary credentials in order to be good at their jobs. Since we are going to have to train them anyway, why not train them at 18 rather than at 22 (or 23, or 24)? We started small, with six students. We put them through a six-month training program that covered the basics they would need to do any job in our company: English, Math and Programming. After they’d completed the program, we placed them in teams across the organization, letting them work as paid interns. 10 years later, those “first six” are still with the company, serving in a variety of positions from software development to systems administrator to project management.

 We’ve learned a lot in 10 years. We’ve put hundreds of people through our program. At the end of it—students can choose to work with Zoho, or go somewhere else. If they choose to go work somewhere else, they walk away debt-free. If they choose to work with us, the interest has to be mutual—managers in our different teams are still free to choose, or not choose, Zoho University students.

Most of them stay—we have an 80% long-term retention rate. We just accepted our 31st class—so we now have some meaningful samples to compare. We’ve found that our ZU grads are just as successful in the company as those who went the traditional college route. The biggest difference we see is that by the time the 18 year old ZU grad turns 22, she has four years of industry experience under her belt, something the college grad most definitely lacks.

A decade is a long time in a human life, and a lifetime in tech. As more employers come to see the advantages of this approach, we believe the ZU model will provide a meaningful alternative to conventional college education. The exploding cost of college education, paired with the lack of relevant skills it imparts on students, demands such an alternative. We’re confident other smart, entrepreneurial companies will follow suit. We’re positive that Zoho University will be here 10 years down the road, supplying our workplace, our economy, and our society with students that have no debt but are full of knowledge and experience.

https://www.zoho.com/perspectives/education.html

The First rule of Ecology is that everything . . . . Bill Wolf

The First rule of Ecology is that everything is connected to everything else, and so when any one component changes, everything else changes in response, even if only a tiny bit. Getting in touch with the "soul of soil" is a crucial first step toward honoring our oneness with all living creatures and helping the long process of repair that a new biological era will require.
Bill Wold Past President of Organic Trade Association

Forward to  The Soul of Soil
Joe Smillie and Grace Gershuny

Colson, Charles - I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me.....

“I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.”

― Charles W. Colson

CS Lewis on reading

A book worth reading only in childhood, is not worth reading even then. C.S Lewis

Aslan stopped, and the children looked into the stream. And there, on the golden gravel of the bed of the stream, lay King Caspian, - CS Lewis, The Silver Chair

 Aslan stopped, and the children looked into the stream. And there, on the golden gravel of the bed of the stream, lay King Caspian, dead, with the water flowing over him like liquid glass. His long white beard swayed in it like water-weed. And all three stood and wept. Even the Lion wept: great Lion-tears, each tear more precious than the Earth would be if it was a single solid diamond. And Jill noticed that Eustace looked neither like a child crying, nor like a boy crying and wanting to hide it, but like a grown-up crying. At least, that is the nearest she could get to it; but really, as she said, people don't seem to have any particular ages on that mountain.

"Son of Adam," said Aslan, "go into that thicket and pluck the thorn that you will find there, and bring it to me."

Eustace obeyed. The thorn was a foot long and sharp as a rapier.

"Drive it into my paw, son of Adam," said Aslan, holding up his right fore-paw and spreading out the great pad towards Eustace.

"Must I?" said Eustace.

"Yes," said Aslan.

Then Eustace set his teeth and drove the thorn into the Lion's pad. And there came out a great drop of blood, redder than all redness that you have ever seen or imagined. And it splashed into the stream over the dead body of the King. At the same moment the doleful music stopped. And the dead King began to be changed. His white beard turned to grey, and from grey to yellow, and got shorter and vanished altogether; and his sunken cheeks grew round and fresh, and the wrinkles were smoothed, and his eyes opened, and his eyes and lips both laughed, and suddenly he leaped up and stood before them—a very young man, or a boy. (But Jill couldn't say which, because of people having no particular ages in Aslan's country. Even in this world, of course, it is the stupidest children who are most childish and the stupidest grown-ups who are most grown-up.) And he rushed to Aslan and flung his arms as far as they would go round the huge neck; and he gave Aslan the strong kisses of a King, and Aslan gave him the wild kisses of a Lion.

At last Caspian turned to the others. He gave a great laugh of astonished joy.

"Why! Eustace!" he said. "Eustace! So you did reach the end of the world after all. What about my second-best sword that you broke on the sea-serpent?"

Eustace made a step towards him with both hands held out, but then drew back with a somewhat startled expression.

"Look here! I say," he stammered. "It's all very well. But aren't you?—I mean didn't you——?"

"Oh, don't be such an ass," said Caspian.

"But," said Eustace, looking at Aslan. "Hasn't he—er—died?"

"Yes," said the Lion in a very quiet voice, almost (Jill thought) as if he were laughing. "He has died. Most people have, you know. Even I have. There are very few who haven't."

"Oh," said Caspian. "I see what's bothering you. You think I'm a ghost, or some nonsense. But don't you see? I would be that if I appeared in Narnia now: because I don't belong there any more. But one can't be a ghost in one's own country. I might be a ghost if I got into your world. I don't know. But I suppose it isn't yours either, now you're here."

A great hope rose in the children's hearts. But Aslan shook his shaggy head. "No, my dears," he said. "When you meet me here again, you will have come to stay. But not now. You must go back to your own world for a while."

AW Tozer- Reading the Bible

Our Bible Reading should not be a marathon{or a sprint], but a slow, deliberate soaking in its message.
A.W. Tozer

FDR

• In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way. Franklin D. Roosevelt
• The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little. Franklin D. Roosevelt
• The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. 
• There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.
• When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on. 
• No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal. 
• More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars - yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments. 
• Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection. 
• Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something. 
• There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still. 
• If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace. 
• Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off. 
• True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. 
• Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle. 
• We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power. 
• It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose. 
• Remember you are just an extra in everyone else's play. 
• The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize. 
• Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can't even lift them. 
• War is a contagion. 
• When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him. 
• I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking. 
• Remember you are just an extra in everyone else's play. 
• It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach. 

Money, Poverty, FDR, Government, Franklin Rosevelt, Politics, control, corruption, manipulation, dictatorship, Wealth,Capitalism,

Man - Louis Nizer

Louis Nizer

• A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.
  • Between You and Me, Beechurst Press, 1948.

• Once early in the morning, at two or three in the morning, when the master was asleep, the books in the library began to quarrel with each other as to which was the king of the library. The dictionary contended quite angrily that he was the master of the library because without words there would be no communication at all. The book of science argued stridently that he was the master of the library for without science there would have been no printing press or any of the other wonders of the world. The book of poetry claimed that he was the king, the master of the library, because he gave surcease and calm to his master when he was troubled. The books of philosophy, the economic books, all put in their claims, and the clamor was great and the noise at its height when a small low voice was heard from an old brown book lying in the center of the table and the voice said "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want". And all of the noise and the clamor in the library ceased, and there was a hush in the library, for all of the books knew who the real master of the library was.
  • "Ministers of Justice", Address delivered at the Eighty-Second Annual Convention of the Tennessee Bar Association at Gatlinburg, June 5, 1963; published in 31 Tennessee Law Review 1 (Fall 1963), p. 19.

• When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing to himself.
  • My Life in Court (1961), p. 115.

• There is an aphorism about a farmer who before sunrise on a cold and misty morning, saw a huge beast on a distant hill. He seized his rifle and walked cautiously toward the ogre to head off an attack on his family. When he got nearer, he was relieved to find that the beast was only a small bear. He approached more confidently and when he was within a few hundred yards the distorting haze had lifted sufficiently so that he could recognize the figure as only that of a man. Lowering his rifle, he walked toward the stranger and discovered he was his brother.
• My Life in Court (1961), p. 443.
  

Douglas Adams - Almost Harmless Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.

The history of the Galaxy has got a little muddled, for a number of reasons: partly because those who are trying to keep track of it have got a little muddled, but also because some very muddling things have been happening anyway.

One of the problems has to do with the speed of light and the difficulties involved in trying to exceed it. You can’t. Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn’t work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn’t really any point in being there.

So, by and large, the peoples of the Galaxy tended to languish in their own local muddles and the history of the Galaxy itself was, for a long time, largely cosmological.

Which is not to say that people weren’t trying. They tried sending of f fleets of spaceships to do battle or business in distant parts, but these usually took thousands of years to get anywhere. By the time they eventually arrived, other forms of travel had been discovered which made use of hyperspace to circumvent the speed of light, so that whatever battles it was that the slower than-light  fleets had been sent to fight had already been taken care of centuries earlier by the time they actually got there. This didn’t, of course, deter their crews from wanting to fight the battles anyway. They were trained, they were ready, they’d had a couple of thousand years sleep, they’d come a long way to do a tough job and by Zarquon they were going to do it.

This was when the first major muddles of Galactic history set in, with battles continually re-erupting centuries after the issues they had been fought over had supposedly been settled. However, these muddles were as nothing to the ones which historians had to try and unravel once time-travel was discovered and battles started pre-erupting hundreds of years before the issues even arose. When the Infinite Improbability Drive arrived and whole planets started turning unexpectedly into banana fruitcake, the great history faculty of the University of MaxiMegalon finally gave up, closed itself down and surrendered its buildings to the rapidly growing joint faculty of Divinity and Water Polo, which had been after them for years.

Which is all very well, of course, but it almost certainly means that no one will ever know for sure where, for instance, the Grebulons came from, or exactly what it was they wanted. And this is a pity, because if anybody had known  anything about them, it is just possible that a most terrible catastrophe would have been averted - or at least would have had to find a different way to happen.

- Speed of Light, Douglas Adams, Almost Harmless, Bad news,

How to Negotiate Effectively - David Oliver

Negotiation is never about digging our heels in.
. . . . .  .
 A number of possibilities exist about the way we view the negotiation process. The moderately aggressive stance is where we look out primarily for a strong gain for ourselves. The win-win concept is where we look for our best interests, if served well, can often serve ours even better. To be effective, both parties must feel they have won.

How to Negotiate Effectively - David Oliver

- Negotiations,