Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.

- Bertolt Brecht
 

29 Jun '08 - The Phoenix Mars lander has found soil so similar to earth's that scientists think plants that like alkaline soil (such as asparagus) would have no trouble taking root there.  Add to that ice and a thin atmosphere containing CO₂ and Mars appears to be very friendly to life indeed.  I hope I live long enough to see the first colony established...  Is Google making us stupid?  Over the past few years has something tinkered with your brain, remapping neural circuitry, reprogramming memory?  Do you still think the way you used to think?  Did immersing yourself in a book or lengthy article used to be easy?  Is that rarely the case anymore?  Does your concentration drift after only 2 - 3 pages?  Do you get fidgety, lose the thread, look for something else to do?  For more than a decade people have spent lots of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet.  But under the sway of a mere typewriter, Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style” - so McLuhan must be right - the medium IS the message.  But Is this all bad?

       Water is heavier than air, so when the valley behind a dam is filled, the crust underneath the water experiences a massive change in stress load.  For example, the Hoover Dam area experienced hundreds of quakes as Lake Mead filled.  Other examples of dam-caused quakes abound.  This science has raised fears that the recent earthquake in China was caused by the filling of the Three Gorges Dam reservoir, although no conclusive evidence has been presented...  Reagan has his highways, Lincoln has his memorial, Washington has the capital, and a state, too.  But President George W Bush may soon be the sole president to have a memorial named after him that you can contribute to from the bathroom.  From the Department of Damned-With-Faint-Praise, a group going by the regal-sounding name of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters here to change the name of a prize-winning water-treatment plant on the shoreline - to the George W Bush Sewage Plant...  Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. - Henry Ford

       Bob's family was horrified at the idea that his relationship with Dorothy might become sexual.  At his age, they wouldn't have thought it possible.  But Bob's son walked in and saw his 95-year-old father in bed with his 82-year-old girlfriend and incredulity turned into panic.  Because both Bob and Dorothy have dementia, the son assumed that his father didn't fully understand what was going on.  Bob's son became determined to keep the two apart.  After that, Dorothy stopped eating.  She lost 21 pounds, was treated for depression, and was hospitalised for dehydration.  When Bob was finally moved out of the facility, she sat in the window for weeks waiting for him.  Do we need to have a sexual power of attorney drawn up before it's too late?...  Paul Proulx takes the collective works of a director, sets it to music, and cuts it like an extended movie trailer or academy award montage.  In some cases, I don't like the music, which makes it difficult to accurately evaluate the quality of the montage.  My favourite was the Coen Brothers, although I feel the Wes Anderson montage does a better job of amply illustrating that director's trademark style.  I like the first Scorsese mashup but not the second (nor Kubrick nor David Lynch)...  The actor Sir Peter Ustinov once famously said “Contrary to general belief, I don't believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who get their first.”  Psychologists find some truth to this argument - rather than picking friends based on intentional choice and common values/interests, friendships may be based on more superficial factors like proximity (think neighbours) or group assignments (mates at work).

       Red spidery filaments of a photopigment called melanopsin are found in relatively few cells in the retina.  The back of the human eye contains about 125 million light-sensitive nerve cells, of two common types - rod cells pick up dim light and cone cells discern colour.  Melanopsin is found in only about 2,000 cells and measures the intensity of incoming light.  In experiments, genetically engineered mice that lack melanopsin can still see, but their circadian cycles - the body's system for keeping track of day and night - malfunctions.  Problems with melanopsin may be the cause of some sleeping problems in the elderly [and teens?]...  Around 1960, as yo-yos gained popularity, Manhattan toy store owner Dan Shackman Jacoby asked a foreign manufacturer to create some for him with images of everyday people and things such as policemen, nurses, sailors, animals and Santa Claus.  The Duncan Yo-Yo Company learned about the items and had them - along with Jacoby's entire shipment of other merchandise - impounded at the Port of New York.  Duncan claimed copyright infringement and sought monetary damages.  Jacoby dug out a photo from a book he came across a few years earlier of a painting in the British Museum circa 1790 titled "Indian Princess Playing With Yo-Yo."  Aha! he thought - this must certainly predate any trademark claimed by Duncan.  Without his own legal representation, Jacoby met with Duncan's lawyer and produced the photo from the art book.  Laughed Jacoby, "The man wasn't even Jewish, but when he saw my photo, he said 'Oy vey!  Here's $300 for your trouble!'"

       In 1999, author Mickey Herskowitz struck a deal with the campaign of George W Bush about a ghost-written autobiography (ultimately titled A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House).  He met with Bush approximately 20 times and began working on the book in mid-1999.  Within 2 months he had completed some 10 chapters - but he was replaced as Bush's ghostwriter after handlers concluded that Bush's views and life experiences were not being cast in a sufficiently positive light.  "He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said Herskowitz.  "He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.  My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.  If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it.  I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.'"  Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father; in aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow.  The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks...  Based upon the work of Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and his colleague Linda Bilmes, the per day cost of the Iraq War for the first 4 years has been $720 million.  Just think of all the health insurance, affordable housing, education, and renewable energy that could buy!

      Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do every minute of every day.  And the invisible man has a list of 10 specific things he doesn’t want you to do.  And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time.  But he loves you.  He loves you.  He loves you and he needs money. - George Carlin...  Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust.  A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary.  Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. - Albert Einstein “Religion and Science”, NY Times Magazine, 9 November 1930...  Regarding wars fought over religious beliefs, mathematician Blaise Pascal said, "You’re basically killing each other to see who’s got the better imaginary friend"...  The presence of an improper apostrophe on a menu can ruin an otherwise delicious meal for a white person.  Jane Black recommends asking for an extra copy of the menu, taking out a pen and marking all of the mistakes.  When you're finished, you should then leave the restaurant with the hope that the chef will see the mistakes and correct them before your next visit.  This is considered the best solution since it allows you to use proper grammar while simultaneously avoiding confrontation.  The other option is to simply recognise that the typos, while egregious, do not prevent actual meaningful communication on these menus.  This would allow you to escape the tag of “elitist,” or “pretentious” (via StuffWhitePeopleLike).

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) offers the following tips on how to get a good night’s sleep

Follow a consistent bedtime routine. Establish a relaxing setting at bedtime. Get a full night’s sleep every night. Avoid foods or drinks that contain caffeine, as well as any medicine that has a stimulant, prior to bedtime. Do not bring your worries to bed with you. Do not go to bed hungry, but don’t eat a big meal before bedtime either. Avoid rigorous exercise within 6 hours of your bedtime. Make your bedroom quiet, dark and a little bit cool. Get up at the same time every morning.

       Is it Duct Tape or Duck Tape?  The first name for duct tape was Duck.  During World War II the US military needed a waterproof tape to keep the moisture out of ammunition cases so they enlisted the Johnson and Johnson Permacel Division to manufacture the tape.  Because it was waterproof, everyone referred to it as “duck” tape (like water off a duck’s back).  Military personnel discovered that the tape was good for lots more than keeping out water.  They used it for Jeep repair, fixing stuff on their guns, strapping equipment to their clothing - the list is endless.  After the war, the housing industry was booming and someone discovered that the tape was great for joining the heating and air conditioning duct work so the color was changed from army green to the silvery colour familiar with today and people started to refer to it as “duct tape.”  Therefore, either name is appropriate...  Motivation is what drives you toward a goal, what keeps you going when things get tough, the reason you get up early to exercise or work late to finish a project.  There are all kinds of motivations, from positive to negative.  Having a boss threaten to fire you is motivation — you’ll likely work harder to complete a project with that kind of pressure.  But positive motivation works better — if it’s something you really want to do, you’ll do a much better job than to avoid something you don’t want (such as being fired).  Start small, with only one goal that you really, really want...  On a practical level, the growing influence of Sovereign wealth funds [mutual funds that invest the excess capital generated by a region or country] really brings up much more basic concerns.  What does it mean for Americans to have decisions about our jobs, our home loans, our school loans and so on to ultimately rest with foreign governments?  What does it mean to surrender this level of control over our own economy?  The trouble is, we don't know.  And that raises perhaps the most important question of all: What if the cure to our mortgage crisis is more deadly than the disease itself?

       I want to paint my house like this...  Serotonin is a type of neurotransmitter, a chemical that sends messages between neurons in the brain.  It is thought to play a important role in the regulation of sleep, dreaming, mental illness, craving, eating, mood, impulsivity and blood pressure.  In mammals, a high serotonin level leads to fat loss while low serotonin levels lead to fat accumulation.  A less-active brain serotonin system is associated with early hardening of the arteries; people who get little exercise, are overweight, have high blood pressure and high levels of blood sugar and cholesterol have low levels of serotonergic function.  A mutant gene that starves the brain of serotonin has been discovered and found to be 10 times more prevalent in depressed patients than in controls.  The brain has 15 types of receptors that bind to serotonin.  Alcoholics have reduced levels of serotonin; since alcohol increases serotonin levels, they are probably using it to self-medicate.  Like alcohol, carbohydrates also increase levels, though alcoholics who report high cravings for carbohydrates can become depressed when placed on a diet high in sugar.  While low serotonin levels can cause women to become depressed, obsessive-compulsive and to gain weight, low levels in men result in a higher prevalence of alcoholism, ADHD and impulse control disorders.  Finally, some of us may become combative or aggressive when we have not eaten.  The essential amino acid necessary for the body to create serotonin can only be obtained through diet; our serotonin levels naturally decline when we don't eat.  Eating tryptophan-rich foods like poultry (chicken soup), bananas and chocolate can boost serotonin levels...  I ordinarily wouldn't post a link to a site like Russian Photoshop Madness - but I was struck by the amount of implied knowledge required to understand how the caption related to the icon.  Was this prepared by a Russian or an American?  It would be interesting to know.

       Oakville sits at the bottom of a hairpin turn the Iowa River makes on its course to the Mississippi.  When it became clear the levee would fail, trucking company owners Trina and Ward Gabeline scrambled to help friends save whatever they could.  They gathered about 3 dozen truck trailers and dropped them off at houses so families could load them with furniture and heirlooms.  Then the company retrieved them and carried the cargo to higher ground.  It has been barely a year since my son and I were in Tipton, Iowa participating in the Hardacre Film Festival.  Everyone was so friendly and I came away feeling that Iowa wouldn't be such a bad place to live.  I never imagined that the green fields of grain we drove past would end up under several feet of muddy water!  This year's festival is in August - I hope by then at least a few Iowans feel like smiling again.

     And perhaps someone could explain to me why the following photo has train cars on the railroad bridge?  Click the photo at right for several large photos including a larger version of the image shown below.

Buildings and debris are seen floating in the Cedar River against a railroad bridge 14 June 2008 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

       The nurse brought a lunch tray to her hospital patient.  She also brought one of those containers used for urine specimens, saying that when convenient he should put a specimen in the glass, that she'd pick it up when she came back to pick up the tray.  Seeing some apple juice on the tray, the patient put two and two together.  He poured the juice in the specimen glass.  The nurse came back, picked up the specimen, held it up to the light, said, "This looks a little off, the colour doesn't seem quite right, are you feeling okay?"  The patient reached out his hand for the glass and said, "Here, let me look."  After looking at it closely, he said, "You could be right - I'll run it through again," then drank it...  I know fast food can be unhealthy, but I hadn't quite realised how much worse restaurant food could be.  (Unfortunately, this list is limited to the US but some of these chains may be international)...  Here is a company that "takes bi-wiring a step beyond creating separate paths for the high and low frequencies by engineering Terminator networks for each frequency range.  This topology delivers increased dynamic range, extended bass with increased bass weight, resolution and clarity, better resolution of fine musical details, accurate soundstaging and imaging, and greater transparency across the audible range."  Oh, and it costs a mere US$26,900.  Real or placebo?  I know what I think...  Tickle in your throat?  Instead of coughing, try scratching your ear.  When the nerves in the ear are stimulated, it creates a reflex in the throat that can cause a muscle spasm which relieves the tickle.  German researchers have also noted that coughing during an injection reduces the pain from the needle stick...  Why you should never leave your dog alone...  Nearly 3 in 10 adults over 65 have no teeth at all.

       In the US, immigrant imposters usually just provide a Social Security card to their employer on their first day of work to fulfill what's known as the “I-9” requirement.  US workers must supply documentation to prove they are eligible to work; nearly always, a Social Security number is used.  While employers can call the Social Security Administration to perform limited verification of the information, that's seldom done.  So it's possible - in fact common - that employees’ names and numbers don't match.  When that happens, no one gets credit for the taxes paid by the worker.  The money simply ends up in the US Treasury.  Since 1983, more than $500 billion in uncredited Social Security wages have been earned by so-called "no match" employees.  That hidden financial benefit for the government may be one reason that agencies don't act more quickly on reports of SSN-only identity theft...  With the complete sequencing of the Y chromosome, surprising details about its structure have become apparent.  It turns out the Y chromosome is like a hall of mirrors, containing many palindromes.  Explanatory animation (which I found very informative) and an interactive lecture on verifying the gender of female athletes (also surprisingly informative; the link is near the bottom of that page).

       Who is this mystery couple?...  Two days in June, 1942 saw two landings of Nazi soldiers on US soil: 4 men landed on Long Island first, followed by 4 more landing in Jacksonville, Florida a dew days later.  George Dasch and Ernest Burger, 2 men in the 1st group, decided to defect.  George had to personally travel to the DC headquarters of the FBI with proof before he was even believed.  Thanks to this, all 8 of the men were rounded up, tried by a military tribunal, convicted, and sentenced to death - George and Ernest included.  But Gestapo agents had arrested Ernest in March 1940 for criticising Party politics; he spent 17 months in a concentration camp, being released only to be drafted into the German Army and sent to spy on the US.  Despite FBI head Hoover's protests, President Roosevelt commuted George and Ernest's sentence to lengthy prison stays (the others were electrocuted the next day - less than 2 months after they landed).  George and Ernest were deported back to Germany as traitors after the war.  (Wikipedia entry)  Two things I found interesting: 1st, the official FBI version states that "J Edgar Hoover appealed to President Roosevelt to commute the sentences of Dasch and Burger".  The 2nd is that in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, the US government approved the use of military tribunals to try captured terrorist suspects - the precedent is this case.  Military commissions, declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2006, were resurrected in an altered form by Congress and President Bush.

       A mother duck braved traffic and a housing estate during a 2-mile chase to rescue her babies from a sewer.  The 6 ducklings fell down an underground access and were swept away – but mum could not fit through it.  So the mallard followed their frantic quacks overground across 2 main roads and a railway line until they stopped under a manhole.  She then sat quacking loudly for hours until a couple of joggers stopped to see what was wrong...  Our relationship with objects is multilayered and often very emotional, and this is expressed in the way we shop.  Shopping is a way for us to interact with the world around us.  "Window shopping" means strolling round and "just looking" at things without having a clear idea of what we are looking for.  People search patiently for certain things, but more than anything, they look for the feeling of having found something that is better and finer than they could have imagined.  At this point they have stretched the boundaries of what would be reasonable to expect to find.  Shopping involves your entire body – walking till your feet ache, picking things up and putting them back and feeling things with your hands, waiting for that particular "Aha!" feeling you get when you find something you want – a peculiar combination of confirmation and surprise...  Africa has more square kilometres than China, the US, Western Europe, India, Argentina, Sweden, Finland, and the British Isles all added together.

       John McCain admits that he doesn't know how to use a computer...  There will be about 9.1 billion people living in the world in 2050, yet they will eat as much food as 13 billion people at today's nutritional levels.  So how will we feed them all?  The problem is that humanity is consuming more food, year-on-year, than it produces; the world is also moving towards a water crisis: cities are now taking up to half of the water that was once used to grow food, while groundwater levels are declining in every country where it is used for food production.  We're also losing land; we are building on it, eroding and degrading it, or locking it in conservation reserves.  The rise of biofuels presents another serious issue since it takes over arable land and diverts resources from food production; then there's the issue thrown up by climate change.  The challenge is to double world food output by 2050 using less land, far less water and fewer nutrients – all in the teeth of increasing rates of drought.  And we need to do it sustainably...  In Thomas Schelling’s classic The Strategy of Conflict, he asked what he called an “unscientific sample of respondents” where they would go to meet a lost friend in New York City, without having specified a place in advance and without any way to communicate.  A large majority said they’d go to wait at the clock tower in the middle of Grand Central Station — and they added overwhelmingly that they’d do so at exactly noon.  I tried this on my sons - and also asked where they'd meet someone in Wellington.  Regarding NYC, one said Grand Central Station, one said Times Square - the difference stemmed from one assuming the person you were meeting was a New Yorker (they will all end up in Grand Central Station sooner or later) or a tourist (they would more likely be found at Times Square).  The same thing held for Wellington, with both thinking to meet a tourist at the Beehive but a Kiwi at the Civic Centre.

       Air quality is a concern for the over 10,000 athletes scheduled to compete in the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China.  Dangerous particulate and ozone pollution levels in the region have many concerned about both athletes and spectators...  Some physicists still find quantum mechanics unpalatable, if not unbelievable, because of what it implies about the world beyond our senses.  The theory's mathematics is simple enough to be taught to undergraduates, but the physical implications give rise to deep unresolved philosophical questions.  Quantum mechanics fundamentally concerns the way in which we observers connect to what we observe.  The theory implies that when we measure particles and atoms, at least 1 of 2 long-held physical principles is untenable: "Distant events do not affect one other", or "Properties we wish to observe exist before our measurements."  One of these, locality or realism, is fundamentally incorrect.  We may now know which one...  While 60% of bachelors who married in their teens in 1986 were divorced 20 years later, the equivalent figure was just 29% for 30 to 34-year-old bachelors.  One divorce is more likely to lead to another: previously married men aged 30 to 34 who married in 1996 were 30% more likely to be divorced 10 years later than bachelors of the same age who married in the same year.  Second marriages are also more fragile for widowers.  The riskiest year for marriages is the 5th, but marriages are at their most vulnerable to irreparable damage during their first 10 years.  Those who married in 2005 have a 45% chance of divorce; should the marriage last a decade, the chance of failure drops to under 31%...  The Suffolk village of Walsham le Willows has unusually good records of the transactions between the lords of the manor and their tenants in the village's two manorial courts during the 1340s.  From these it can be deduced that the Great Pestilence, as it was called, reached Walsham around Easter 1349, and killed rather more than half of the population of about 1,500 within two months.  At its height the death rate was probably 50 a day.

       Carlo Jorges has invented a special "roller" that coats your walls with images taken from Flickr.  Wallpeppr is a special roller that hooks to your computer via a network cable and lets you paint images on the physical walls of your room.  The software transfers your chosen picture to the roller which prints it on the wall with inkjet technology as you roll.  It is not yet commercially available.  While I very much like this idea, the print quality is low and apparently the device only works on wallpaper (which I don't have), not painted walls.  Otherwise, I could just add my own touchup paint to have a spectacular mural at low cost.  Perhaps they'll get to that...  Things-You-May-Not-Know: Many sailors wore gold earrings so that they could afford a proper burial when they died.  Coffee is the second largest item of international commerce in the world; the largest is petrol.  When Albert Einstein died, his final words died with him as the nurse at his side didn’t understand German.  Upon the death of F D Roosevelt, Harry S Truman became President of America; both Truman's grandfathers had names beginning with "S" so Truman’s mother, wanting to disappoint neither of them, selected S as his middle name.  The Ecuadorian poet, José Olmedo, has a statue in his honour in his home country - but, unable to commission a sculptor due to limited funds, the government brought a second-hand statue - of the English poet Lord Byron.  Iceland is the world’s oldest functioning democracy.

       Tie merchants have enjoyed a 10% increase in UK sales in the last 3 months.  The reason their trade is flourishing against a grim economic backdrop is, they say, because office workers are desperate to "smarten up" to avoid being picked for redundancy.  Even those who have already got the chop are buying ties to wear to job interviews (via Neatorama)...  Vinyl shower curtains emit toxic chemicals that have been linked to serious health problems, according to a report by an environmental organisation.  The curtains contain high concentrations of chemicals linked to liver damage as well as damage to the central nervous, respiratory and reproductive systems.  The study was commissioned to determine what causes that "new shower curtain smell" familiar to many consumers.  The study found that PVC shower curtains contain high concentrations of phthalates, which have been linked to reproductive effects, and varying concentrations of organotins, which are compounds based on tin and hydrocarbons.  These compounds are not chemically bonded to the shower curtain, but are often added to soften it.  One of the curtains tested released measurable quantities of as many as 108 volatile organic compounds into the air, some of which persisted for nearly a month.  Little information on toxicity is available for 86 of these...   One way to beat the high price of gas is to turn your car into a rolling billboard.  Some companies are willing to pay you $500 a month plus free gas.  Now, there's a waiting list...  John McCain was asked by a mother of two sons if he believes the nation will one day re-institute the military draft.  It would take an “all-out World War III” to make that happen, McCain responded.  Consequently, a military draft may be a possibility as McCain himself has suggested we are in a “World War III” confrontation with Iran.  Asked about the military draft during a September 2007 townhall meeting, McCain said, “I might consider it; I don’t think it’s necessary, but I might consider it if everybody equally could serve.”

       With fuel costs almost tripling since 2000, now accounting for as much as 40% of operating expenses at some carriers, airlines are cutting costs and raising revenue in ways once unthinkable.  US Airways Group has eliminated snacks.  Delta Air Lines is charging $25 for phone reservations.  American Airlines last month became the first US company to charge $15 for one checked bag.  In fact, imagine a large scale at the airline ticket counter - one that can simultaneously weigh your bags and you - and the price of your ticket will depend upon the total.  Unfortunately, that idea may not be so far-fetched...  Here's the problem with gay marriage: It used to be that if you were over 40 and unmarried, people thought you were gay.  If gay marriage becomes acceptable, now, if you're over 40 and unmarried, people will think it's because you're unattractive! (via Volokh archives)...  Things-about-the-Nobel-Prize-You-May-Not-Know: Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, Indian leader who advocated non-violence in the struggle for Indian independence from colonial rule, never won the Nobel Peace Prize.  He was nominated 5 times, but failed each time.  He was assassinated just 2 days before the nominations for the 1948 prize were due, which, since he was deceased, disqualified him from the nomination and, therefore, the prize.  The Nobel Peace Prize Committee considered selecting Gandhi for the award in spite of the rules, but because he left no legal heirs, they were not sure to whom the award should be presented.  Instead, the committee elected to withhold the award that year, stating that "there was no suitable living candidate" for the award, a clear reference to the recently-deceased Gandhi...  There are actually more species of bees than of birds and mammals put together - in fact, there are more than 19,200 described bee species, only a few of which make honey...  Crimes of Carelessness: a spoof of a 1950s safety video.

       If the nearest you have to a garden is a small courtyard, balcony or terrace, you can still create your own green space.  A jumble of various pots stacked on stands and clustered loosely lends a pleasantly casual look.  Containers aligned with precision and planted with trim specimens, such as rosemary standards or ivy topiaries, create instant formality...  The first sight (in 1947) of a woman in a minimal two piece bathing suit was as explosive as the detonation of the atomic bomb by the US at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Isles, hence the naming of the bikini...  There is one common appetite system in the brain monitoring our desire for a host of pleasures from sweets to pretty faces, alcohol to lotto winnings.  When it is stimulated by, for example, a sexy picture or the smell of baked goods, we experience a general craving for anything pleasant.  Basically, we just want to be rewarded.  This has been terned the "bikini effect" - but these stirred appetites can be satiated by a different type of reward — financial security.

Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated.  You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.

David Lloyd George
 

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