News You Need To Know

Saturday, January 26, 2008

These are essays worth reading

As are these, Part II of the Sydney Awards compliments of David Brooks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/28/opinion/28brooks.html

Monday, January 21, 2008

Some of My Favorite Quotes

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." -- Albert Einstein, when asked to explain the radio

"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues." Abraham Lincoln

"There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth." Leo Tolstoy

"When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth." Kurt Vonnegut

"Be fanatics. When it comes to being, doing, and dreaming the best, be maniacs." A.M. Rosenthal

Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?'
Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?'
Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?'
But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'
And there comes a time when one must take
a position that is neither safe, nor politic,
nor popular, but one must take it because
one's conscience tells one that it is right."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction." -- Oscar Wilde

Top Ten Signs Your A Perfectionist courtesy of the BBC

1. You can't stop thinking about a mistake you made.
2. You are intensely competitive and can't stand doing worse than others.
3. You either want to do something "just right" or not at all.
4. You demand perfection from other people.
5. You won't ask for help if asking can be perceived as a flaw or weakness.
6. You will persist at a task long after other people have quit.
7. You are a fault-finder who must correct other people when they are wrong.
8. You are highly aware of other people's demands and expectations.
9. You are very self-conscious about making mistakes in front of other people.
10. You noticed the error in the title of this list.
Source: The BBC News Online
Of course, no one can be perfect. So in their quest for perfection, perfectionists place their health in peril through stress and anxiety--and they can make other people's lives miserable. Working for a perfectionist boss is really tough since he or she will have unrealistic and unreasonable expectations of employees. The BBC News Online notes that some physicians think perfectionism is a medical condition that should be categorized as a behavioral problem or psychiatric disorder. "...extreme forms of perfectionism should be considered an illness similar to narcissism, obsessive compulsiveness, dependent-personality disorder, and other personality disorders because of its links to distress and dysfunction," Canadian professor Gordon Flett told the BBC News Online.
Think your personality is set in stone? Think again. Find out how five key personality traits may change as we age.
Flett has identified three types of perfectionists:
--Self-oriented perfectionists, who expect perfection of themselves.
--Other-oriented perfectionists, who demand perfection from other people.
--Socially prescribed perfectionists, who think others expect perfection from them.
How can you spot a perfectionist? Look for people who...
...have a "self-promotion" style and try to impress others by bragging or displaying their perfection.
...shun situations in which they might display imperfection.
...have a tendency to keep problems to themselves, including an inability to admit failure to others.
A scary warning for perfectionists: The impossible quest for perfection has been linked to a host of emotional, physical, and relationship problems, including depression, eating disorders, marital discord and even suicide.

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