• A FAMILY BUSINESS GENERALLY HAS UNIQUE BENEFITS BUT ALSO VERY TOUGH CHALLENGES including: (1) Handling unqualified or dysfunctional family members who must be brought-in ‘just because’ they’re family; (2) The Entitlement attitude of next-generation members – that the business ‘owes’ them a job and high compensation & benefits; (3) Children ‘reporting’ to protective parents and held to a lower standard – which deprives them of learning or developing confidence; (4) Confusion from absence of clearly defined roles and boundaries between family, business and ownership; (5) Executive or Managerial Titles bestowed without decision-making authority; (6) Separate attorneys vying for conflicting agendas. DCG have decades of experience and expertise in dealing (strategically and emotionally) with these Family Business matters; let us help
  • THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ACCELERATE GLOBAL THREATS and will “greatly hinder America’s ability to respond to them.” Recent evidence includes the Mideast drought which contributed to food prices triggering uprisings in Egypt, Syria & Nigeria, and melting Arctic ice which exposed a million sq. miles of open water (six Californias) prompting Russia to “plant their flag in the seabed marking it as their turf… and test fire an intercontinental missile with range to hit New York or Washington DC.” The Pentagon manages over 550,000 facilities, 28 million acres of land, and over 700 coastal installations “all of which will be impacted by climate change in some way” – sea-level rise, higher tides, storm surges, flash flooding, thawing permafrost – with “the future of entire installations, many virtually irreplaceable due to their geography and strategic location, in question.” Some thirty military bases on the east coast alone are at risk (including Norfolk Naval and Langley Air Force) where sea levels are rising at up to double the global average and “military readiness is already being impacted… posing immediate risks to national security.” While scientists and politicians debate why climate is changing, who is responsible, or what can be done about it, reality is that “when oceans rise, instability follows…and we are committed to a future of disorder and conflict.” [ROLLING STONE – Feb 26, 15]
  • ‘TOR’ IS AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB. It was set up by U.S. Naval Research Lab in order to “let operatives communicate securely and give people in authoritarian countries anonymity online.” TOR’s reputation is sketchy since it quickly became the home to crooks, terrorist groups, money-launderers, child molesters and drug dealers. The reason is that, by randomly routing through a network of over 6,000 computers, TOR blocks cookies so advertisers or others cannot trace users’ IP addresses. As this feature becomes more appealing to varying users, some mainstream organizations (including FaceBook & Mozilla) have been setting up special TOR-connected access, along with law firms, newspapers and others who want to increase security and/or dissuade governments from monitoring their communications.  [BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK – Feb 16, 15]
  • “IN LIFE, AS IN ALL STORIES, ENDINGS MATTER… But more and more people spend their last hours exactly as they wished not to: admitted to a hospital for what they think is a treatment, only to be stuck until death…hooked up to machines under fluorescent lights, surrounded by strangers…versus familiar places and those they love.” With fear of legal liability for failure to try any & everything possible, doctors (often pressured by selfish objectives of family or clergy) “fail to recognize that patients have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer… Moreover, multiple studies have shown that the ‘try everything’ approach appears not even to offer a longer life; patients entering hospice care – which usually means abandoning attempts at a cure – live at least as long as those receiving traditional care.” [THE ECONOMIST – Oct 4, 14] Dennis is proud to sit on the California Advisory Council for COMPASSION & CHOICES, the national organization committed to making ‘Death with Dignity’ for terminally ill, mentally competent people a legal choice. [ compassionandchoices.org ] and California’s legislators will soon be debating the End-of-Life Options Act, a Bill to authorize aid in dying for terminally ill residents. Please consider supporting this important and just cause by contacting your elected officials:  Click here
  •  DRUGS COMMONLY USED FOR INSOMNIA, ANTI-DEPRESSANTS, ALLERGIES OR BLADDER CONTROL “may cause an increased risk of developing dementia.” An 8-year, University of Washington study of 3,500 seniors found that nearly a quarter developed some sort of dementia, in most cases Alzheimer’s disease,” when using anticholinergic drugs in conventional dosages for more than three years. [BBC.COM reported in THE WEEK – Feb 13, 15]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:  Positively astonishing close up magic: http://viduki.com/video/18937/Where_does_she_keep_it_all.  

English content dominates the Web, but Chinese content is growing five times as fast, and Russian over six times faster.

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