• REALISTIC LONG-TERM PLANNING BEGINS WITH ‘GOAL SETTING’ based on three critical factors: (1) Specificity; (2) Reality-based achievability; and (3) Measurability – which means “defining what constitutes completion or achievement (i.e. assessment measures like quantity, quality, money spent or saved), and establishing target dates for both key steps along the way and end-result.” DCG can help. Call us before your reality-check bounces.  [JRNL OF ACCOUNTANCY – May 17]
  • INTERNET CONNECTION “CAN BREED CONTEMPT… Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other internet communities have splintered the western world into angry factions, and filled public discourse with vitriol and insult.” It turns out that rather than bringing social harmony to the ‘global village’ of some six billion people with mobile phones (1/3 more than have access to a working toilet), technology has generated a “constant avalanche of online self-disclosure and oversharing of differing ideas preferences & habits” – which instead irritates people with “an oppressive sense of digital crowding,” who then lash back. The internet’s faceless mode of interaction promotes people to share four times as much information about themselves as when talking in person, “making cultural differences more salient… and placing greater stress on the ways those people differ rather than resemble us.” Studies find that, on average, we like strangers best when we know the least about them… Technology serves as an amplifier for humanity’s worst traits as well as our best.” [BOSTON GLOBE – Apr 21, 17]
  • “MOST PEOPLE IN GOOD HEALTH HOPE THAT THEY WILL DIE AT HOME, when the time comes, free from pain, at peace, and surrounded by loved ones for whom they are not a burden… But too often patients receive drastic treatment in spite of their dying wishes – by default when doctors ‘do everything possible’ as they have been trained to, without talking through people’s preferences or ensuring the prognosis is fully understood.” Roughly 2/3 of deaths worldwide are caused by chronic diseases, with the same percent happening in a hospital or nursing home – often after a “crescendo of desperate overtreatment,” spending time in an intensive-care unit in their final three months, almost one in five undergoing surgery in their last month and (in America) about half evolving to conflict between family and doctors. “Such zealous intervention can be agonizing for all concerned, contributing to family suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and feeling prolonged grief.” [THE ECONOMIST – Apr 29, 17]
  • SHOELACES UNTIE FROM IMPACT WHEN HITTING THE GROUND. In ever-useful scientific research, mechanical engineers at UC-Berkeley spent over a hundred hours of testing to determine that ground-pounding “gradually loosens the knot, and swinging the legs whips the ends, causing laces to slip.” By measuring treadmill running, they determined that laces accelerated at seven times the rate of an object in free fall, subjecting them to more than twice the g-force astronauts feel during a typical rocket launch… representing a significant step toward unraveling the strange physics of knots.”  [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR – Apr 12, 17]
  • HUMANITY HAS ONLY ONE CENTURY LEFT BEFORE DOOMSDAY, according to renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, after which we would need to “evacuate the planet and become a multi-planetary species.” The critical factors that lead him to this timeline are “man-made climate change, asteroid strikes, epidemics and overpopulation.” The most likely destination appears to be Mars, where SpaceX “intends to land people by 2025, set up a colony by 2033, and then a stable habitat within the next couple decades.” NASA and China are also pursuing a rapid timetable for Mars colonization. For an amazing video preview: https://futurism.com/stephen-hawking-humanity-only-has-100-years-left-on-earth-before-doomsday/ [FUTURISM.COM – May 4, 17]

       “The more efficiently a project is done, the greater the chance it will have to be undone.”

        Way politically incorrect, but a very funny video on the frustration of not being able to log in to a social media server:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxwq3zADp0PGV05KNEFZY1Nrcml0U2NMVWlWXzZDTHg2Vl84/view?pref=2&pli

       “Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem… And crime expands in proportion to our willingness to put up with it.”

       “Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life…  Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.”