What My Strange Curtis Stone Dream Taught Me About Tenacity

Tenacity is an amazing quality to have - it can drive us to continue in work and life through times of frustration, overwhelm, even loss of faith. However, sometimes tenacity can also cloud our judgement and lead to push through something that is no longer right for us, or may just be the wrong time. Here's where patience comes in. Check out this post for more.

I woke up this morning to the sound of my alarm and with the memory of a strange dream still playing in my head ('strange dream' is a bit of an oxymoron, though, isn't it - after all, what dream isn't strange?). Although elements of the dream were strange, it had a really powerful message that I just had to share.

By the way, I totally know reading or hearing about other peoples' dreams can be a bit of a bore, so I'll try to be quick.

In this dream, I was by a river with a big group of others watching a parade of boats sail by. One boat had a demonstration of some kind of dancing and acrobatics, with one young woman as the star attraction. Just as she was about to perform some amazing flip, she lost her nerve and missed her opportunity.

Upset, she threw herself off the boat and onto a raft, and had a temper tantrum in frustration. All of a sudden, seeming to make up her mind, the young woman dove back in the river and started to swim back toward where the boat had been. By this stage it was raining really heavily and the water had become very rough and dangerous.

She looked so small and vulnerable swimming back down the churning river, when, from out of nowhere, dashing celebrity chef Curtis Stone launches a kayak onto the river to rescue her. (He may or may not have been shirtless for this rescue mission. Ok, he was. Thank you subconscious!)

Plucking her from the water, she was very angry at him and the vibe from crowd was mixed, with not everyone celebrating his heroics. From the banks of the river one onlooker cried out 'But it's her dream!' In other words, how could you stop her from living her dream?

In his infinite and ruggedly handsome wisdom, Curtis (who was now back on the banks of the river) gently turned to this onlooker and said: 'She doesn't have to give up on her dream just because now is not the right time. Don't mistake recklessness for tenacity.' (Click to Tweet)

Then my stupid alarm woke me up.

This dream got me thinking about my own tenacity as well as the importance of patience and acceptance when working on goals. What do I mean by tenacity? It’s about persistence and not giving up until a goal has been achieved. It’s a great quality to have, especially when you’re working toward creating something challenging.

But I know that, for me, it's so easy to enter into a now-or-never mindset when chasing my dreams. All too often the delicious and complete achievement of what I want can feel incredibly urgent because I want what I want so badly. My current situation can feel like a drag and surely I can't bear to live another day without getting what I want.

Is it the same for you?

Living on a treadmill of chasing, chasing, chasing rather than exercising a bit of patience short-changes us in a few ways:

  • We rob ourselves of the ability to enjoy the work and the process because we're always focused on what's next and what we don't have
  • It can lead us to compromise the quality of our work as we rush through to just get it done
  • It sets our minds to view happiness as something our future selves get to enjoy, and a state that can only to be achieved once xyz has been accomplished
  • Linking our happiness so intrinsically to the achievement of goals puts our mind anywhere but where we are right now, yet more often than not, there's a whole heck of a lot to be grateful for in the present

I see this message about patience (delivered care of dream Curtis Stone) as showing up for me at just the right time. I have a few big goals on the go at present - life and work dreams - and I've been working so hard to try to make these happen that, upon reflection, I suppose I'm almost trying to force things into being. I know I do this, yet I keep falling into the same pattern over and over. I call it 'maniforcing' (as opposed to 'manifesting') as there's so much pushing and shoving and hunger involved try to make something happen, rather than letting go a bit and allowing things to flow and just be.

Not only is this state super uncomfortable, but it also just doesn't work. I might get some things done, and I feel like I must be achieving something as I'm so busy and pretty much constantly overwhelmed, but in reality I have a hunch I'm a living example of the analogy of shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

Like the young woman in my dream, am I confusing recklessness with tenacity? I'm proud of my tenacity and it has led me to pursue many things that I dream of, even after years of things not coming to pass. I'm simply just not going to give up on my beautiful dreams as the alternative is too horrid. End of story. Although I'm not an especially wilful person, I am pretty freaking determined to get what I want. Not in a Veruca Salt, I-want-it-now-Daddy kind of way, but more that I can feel what the realisation of my dreams will be like and it is all too lovely to ever abandon.

So where does patience come in?

True patience comes from accepting that things will not necessarily happen when you want them to happen, no matter how hard you push. (Click to Tweet)

This is different than being patient because you have to. Like 'things are taking longer than I want - oh well, I'll just have to be patient.' Instead, true patience is accepting upfront that things may (and probably will) take a whole lot longer than you'd like and being ok with that. It's about changing the way you go about achievement. It's about using your tenacity for good, instead of evil.

Ok, so 'evil' is probably a bit strong, but I think you get the message. Tenacity, without patience and reason, can be like a runaway train that feels like it's headed somewhere but in reality you have little control over your destination. And without control, you'll likely end up somewhere different from where you wanted to go in the first place.

So how do any of us harness the brilliance of tenacity, without being burnt by its fiery power? How can we be driven and persistent but not lose our minds in the process? How do you know when to be patient and when to forge ahead? I'm so glad you asked! My friend, I've got you covered. Not only have I prepared some of my best tips, but I've put them in this sweet download for you. Click the button below to get your hands on it:

Now that you've accessed these tips, I'd love to hear more about how tenacity shows up in your life. Does tenacity come naturally to you? Or is more of a cultivated habit? Have you been burnt out from driving yourself too hard?


5 Key Elements You Need To Learn To Play The Guitar

by Maurice Richard

You see someone playing the guitar and you want to be able to do that. Who doesn’t? It looks fun and cool.

Learning how to play guitar is probably one of the things most people would like to do. But not everyone attempts it.

Then there are some that try to learn but do not get very far and quit. Others make it further but get stuck and don’t know how to move forward.

How can you be the one who makes it through and learns how to play the guitar successfully and become a good guitar player?

1. You Need A Strong Desire To Learn

Of course you need a desire to learn to play the guitar in order to achieve that end. That’s absolutely the essential starting point. However a desire is not enough.

The key word in this case is strong. Most people in the world probably have a desire to learn to play the guitar. And probably want to be able to play it well.

However, not many people attain that level. Why? That’s because it is not a very strong desire for those people. It’s more like a wish. Something they would like to do. Someday.

Don’t fall into that trap. A strong desire to learn guitar is something that will help you overcome the frustrations that will come. It will help you carve out the time each night to practice.

Without a strong desire you simply will not commit to the long-term process required to learn to play the guitar.

You can cultivate this by seeing yourself playing the guitar as often as you can. See yourself successful already.

2. You Must Have Perseverance To Overcome Obstacles

Once you have the strong desire you need to learn to stick with it. Learning how to play the guitar is not the easiest thing to do in the world. If it were everyone would do it.

There are physical limitations to overcome. There are mental barriers to climb over. You have to commit your time, energy and money to accomplish all of this too.

So when things go south at some point, and they usually do, you need to be prepared to stick with it. You need to push through and not give up.

That may require you to go into maintenance mode or slow down your progress at some point as you learn, but you need to do everything you can to keep moving and not stop learning, playing and practicing. Do not give up.

Perseverance goes hand in hand with desire of course. Without a strong desire you will not likely persevere. However just because you do have a strong desire does not mean you won’t quit at some point.

I have many students come to me that have a strong desire to learn the guitar who quit when they were younger. Then, 20 years later, they are finally getting back into it.

They always regret stopping because they can see very quickly how much further they would be now had they simply kept going, even if it was minimal.

Even if you can only carve out 5 or 10 minutes on busy days, it is much better to do this than doing nothing. It will help you keep the habit going.

3. Without Consistent Discipline You Will Not Get Very Far

One of the biggest culprits that sidetrack people and make it much more difficult to learn to play the guitar successfully is a lack of discipline and consistency. For most it makes it impossible to be honest.

If you do not have the discipline to consistently practice every day, it will be very difficult to learn and progress quickly enough for you to maintain the proper motivation to keep going.

For one thing callouses will not develop properly which cause you to press harder to make a decent sound. That means more strain on muscles on tendons too.

This leads fatigue and the possibility of injury. But it also means your ability to form chords and change them regresses every day you do not practice them.

It’s like taking one step forward by practicing today, then taking 2 steps back by missing 2 days and so on.

If you have the desire and the perseverance already, you should be able to carve out a daily practice time. It does not have to be a huge block of time either.

In actual fact it is perfectly fine and sometimes better for people starting out to break their practice times into smaller chunks.

And if you have a crazy day you can probably squeeze in at least a small session to maintain your callouses and muscle strength as mentioned in the previous section.

This is critically important on a mental level because as you discipline yourself to practice daily you see more progress, you enjoy the process more and are more likely to continue until you reach your goals.

4. Confidence Is Imperative

Confidence is needed in different areas when it comes to learning to play the guitar. The first and most important is for you to believe you can do it. Many beginner guitar players struggle with this and you may relate.

This confidence is difficult to get at first if you try to learn on your own because things do not always go well and seem harder than you expected. So the doubts quickly creep in and can overcome your initial confidence.

I assure you however that unless you have severe physical limitations you can successfully learn to play the guitar. Give yourself a chance.

The next level of confidence is in the method of learning you are using. A lot of methods come with big promises including many teachers who are available in your area.

You start eager and trusting that not only does this method work but that it will work for you. But soon after you begin you start to feel this is not for you or that you are not able to learn.

It is hard and overwhelming. It seems like you overestimated your ability. So your confidence in the method dissipates.

This is where you may mistakenly start blaming yourself for the lack of success. Maybe you don’t have what it takes, maybe you are not meant for it, etc. It’s probably not you; the method you chose likely does not work for you.

The secret to overcoming this and being confident in your ability to learn to play every step of the way is to know what you need to learn and what the proper order you need to learn it in.

But how do you get this? How do you know what you should learn at every stage? You don’t. That’s why most methods out there do not work for you because they do not know you or take you into consideration. They just give you stuff to learn in whatever order they think you should learn.

What you need instead is someone that will look at where you are and then get you where you want to be and personalize to you!

5. The Key For You Is to Find A Good Teacher

This is one of the most important keys for you to successfully learn to play the guitar. Why? Because a good teacher will help develop and foster all of the other key elements already mentioned above.

Of course you have to have the initial desire to learn but a good teacher will help increase this desire by creating a plan for you that builds from one success to another.

And when you are successful it’s pretty easy to believe you can accomplish something and persevere. But if you do get stuck, a good teacher will know it and they will know how to help you push through too.

Not everyone is disciplined in his or her life and a good teacher will know this. They will find ways to help you progress in class and at home based on how disciplined you are or aren’t. They will have different strategies to help you.

Finally, confidence is what you need more than anything else. If you do not believe you can achieve your goal to learn to play the guitar, if you do not believe the method or the teacher can get you the result you desire, you will not do it. Period.

A good guitar teacher will guide you every step of the way. They will know what the right things are for you to learn and the right order for you to learn them in. This way you avoid most if not all of the problems and frustrations that come with learning to play the guitar. You will experience success every step of the way and this will boost your confidence continuously.

You Can Learn To Play The Guitar

Learning to play the guitar can be difficult. It does take time. If you have the 5 key elements of desire, perseverance, discipline, confidence and a good teacher, you will be a lot more likely to succeed.

You may think that you lack in some of the areas above. Most of us do. That’s why the most important of the 5 keys is to find a good teacher.

When you find a really good teacher that is properly trained on how to teach the guitar they will help you find or cultivate your weak areas. They will inspire you and show you the way you need to go. They will literally hold your hand and walk you all the way to the result you want.

So go out there and start looking for the right teacher and you will be successful! You will learn how to play the guitar!

About The Author:

Maurice Richard is a professional guitar teacher that operates out of the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He has been a member of an elite guitar teaching mentorship program since 2007 and has taught many people how to learn to play the guitar. Visit his website now to find out how you can learn to apply the five elements you need to learn to play guitar.


아시아경제 최신 기획이슈

[PREVIEW] SBS TV series "Paradise Farm" - 1st episode

최종수정 2011.06.08 18:23 기사입력 2011.01.26 03:02

SBS "Paradise Farm" Mon-Tue 8:55 p.m.

SBS' "Paradise Farm" [SBS]

SBS' "Paradise Farm" [SBS]

'Please regard us like a comic' is what the new SBS drama “Paradise Farm” stresses from the very beginning. The way colorful numbers hover above the head of the main characters participating in an auction and how the screen “cracks” like a window in certain scenes make that point even clearer. By the time one reaches the part where a pink heart that floats across the screen to cover the lower area of Han Dong-ju's (Shim Chang-min) body who has just stepped out of his shower, the viewer is given no other choice but to go with the flow. Dajee's (Lee Yeon-hee) overreaction as she struggles to stand up after falling on horse dung, too looked a bit contrived. And this all makes sense given what the director said earlier: “No need to take it seriously, just enjoy it as light, happy drama.”

However a comic book-like plot cannot be an excuse for having a weak structure. The acting of the two main leads of the story combined -- Shim Chang-min who is acting for the first time and Lee Yeon-hee who has yet to earn favorable reviews for her acting -- were unstable as expected. But the reason it is hard to find fault with their acting alone is because the drama hardly gives time for the viewers to see what their characters are about. The story being centered too much on the plot makes it that much harder for actors -- especially those with weak acting -- to appear convincing enough in the eyes of viewers. That is why although one can presume there is a story to why Dong-ju and Dajee have such different attitudes toward each other when they meet up in Australia for the first time in six years, it is hard to sympathize with them nor follow the story.

It is easy to criticize Lee Yeon-hee’s monologue when she first meets Yunho (Joo Sang-uk) which seemed as if she was talking aside the stage. But when seeing her repeating it, mumbling her troubles aloud for the whole world to know when they meet the second time, makes one doubt the looseness of original scenario that tries to find an easy way out to carry on with the plot. The story which should cover up for how it lacks when it comes to acting, is only making that void look bigger instead.

Reporter : Lee Seung-Han fourteen@Editor : Heidi Kim heidikim@

<ⓒ10Asia All rights reserved>

간격처리를 위한 class 간격처리를 위한 class


University Terrace

Branding - UI Design

Stanford University recently developed a new community in Palo Alto, CA, called University Terrace, which provides housing for their staff. The goal was to create a welcoming brand and a website that was easily navigable.

The logo represents the different layers of a terrace and are an abstract representation of the diversity in Stanford University. The colors used hint at the welcoming and fun nature of the community.

Simplifying the User Experience

One of the biggest challenges for the University Terrace website was the Interactive Map. In a single view, the user needed the ability to navigate through all available single family homes or condominiums, the different community amenities, Palo Alto’s points of interest, and have the ability to view information for each of those elements.


You know the feeling. The one you get when you run into a particularly vexing problem in the practice room. Where no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get a note to speak right, or a phrase to come out the way it should.

Maybe you can’t get your fingers to cooperate, or figure out what’s wrong with your embouchure, or get the tempo where it needs to be. Whatever it is, it’s frustrating, and as the frustration builds, you dig your heels in, narrow your eyes, grit your teeth, and continue to hack at it, hoping that brute force will eventually lead to some sort of breakthrough.

There’s something to be said for persistence, but as someone once said, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”

Generally, once we reach this level of frustration, we’re just making things worse.

So what alternatives do we have?

A 5-shower day

I met a writer once, who said that on days when she is struggling with her writing, she might take as many as 5 showers in a single day.

Creative types sometimes refer to this as a “creative pause” – a brief pulling away from the problem, which often results in new ideas, or solutions presenting themselves unexpectedly.

You may have seen this video of the mouse and the cracker, but check out what happens around the 54-second mark.

Just when the mouse looks like it’s about to give up, it takes a creative pause, and tries one last time. Yes, the pause is like 4 seconds to us, but isn’t that like 2 minutes and 12 seconds in mouse seconds (1 human year = 33 mouse years)?

Am I making too much of this little mouse’s pause? Probably, but hey, it’s still a fun video.

So what is it about taking a break that jump starts our creativity anyway?

Well, it appears that it’s not the break itself that’s important, but what we do during the break that matters.

Mind wandering: good or bad?

When you are driving in treacherous road conditions, or performing delicate open-heart surgery, or auditioning for a big job, letting your mind wander aimlessly is just asking for trouble. Bad things are liable to happen unless you are super-focused on the task at hand.

But when it comes to enhancing creativity and problem-solving, mind-wandering may actually be quite desirable.

This study, for instance, found that being distracted enhances creativity, while being too focused on the problem diminishes it.

Another study found that individuals diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) tend to score higher than non-ADHD folks on standardized measures of creativity. The same researchers have also gathered data which suggests that people with ADHD may enjoy greater levels of achievement in creative domains like music, art, cooking, writing, humor, and invention.

How to use your creative pause for maximal results

A more recent study out of UC Santa Barbara tested 145 participants’ creativity with the Unusual Uses Task, where the objective is to generate as many unusual uses as possible for a common object (like a lawn chair) in 2 minutes.

After running everyone through this test once, participants were split into 4 groups. One group did it again immediately. Another group engaged in an attention-demanding task for 12 minutes. A third group engaged in a cognitively undemanding task for 12 minutes (basically just responding to a computer prompt asking if a number was even or odd). And a final group just sat quietly for 12 minutes.

The researchers then used an assessment to find out how much mind-wandering occurred during this “incubation” period, and found that the folks engaged in the undemanding task experienced significantly more mind-wandering than those who were busy with the demanding task.

Then the researchers had the participants repeat the same test.

Lo and behold, these folks who were in the undemanding task group – whose minds were doing the most mind-wandering – improved their scores by about 40%.

How did the others do?

None of the other groups improved their scores at all.

Take action

So the next time you run into a problem in the practice room (or elsewhere) that has you stumped, and you need new ideas to try, new approaches or solutions to implement, take a break.

Take a shower. Mow the grass. Wash the dishes. Fold laundry. Do something that uses some brain power, but not too much.

Don’t think about the problem directly, but just let your mind wander for a bit, then come back to your instrument after a little while.

When you return, maybe you’ll find that the solution was there the whole time. You just needed a little “creative pause.”

Just for fun

Need a break right now? Watch this awesome short film (<2 min, but you’ll probably watch it like 5 times). It’s funny at face value, but taking your wife’s drunk joke and turning it into art? That’s funny on a whole other level.

photo credit: CaptBrando via photopin cc


Jamie Sangster, P.Eng, MSc, CD

Jamie is the founder of Leeway Marine. Prior to Leeway, Jamie served in the Royal Canadian Navy for 20 years as a marine systems engineering officer and naval architect, and has extensive sea experience aboard Canadian major warships. Jamie has spent his career on the operational waterfront and at sea in various technical and operational leadership roles. These positions include engineering officer aboard a Canadian patrol frigate in domestic and international operations, east coast fleet maintenance manager, east coast fleet senior naval architect, technical director for a major submarine refit project, and detachment commander and technical lead for new ship construction at Irving Shipbuilding.

Jamie originates from Pictou Landing and holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Royal Military College as well as a master’s degree in naval architecture from the University of London UK.

Mark Decker, RSE, CSS, MCPM, CD
Vice President, Fleet Superintendent

Mark retired from the Royal Canadian Navy after serving 23 years as a marine engineer and radiation safety specialist. The Newfoundland and Labrador native has extensive training in marine diesel engines and was awarded his marine diesel inspection qualification by the RCN.  Mark’s expertise at sea and alongside ensured the correct operation of many systems, such as main engines, gearing, shafting, generators, hydraulics, air, lube oil, fuel and domestic water.

Mark earned his master’s certificate in project management from Saint Mary’s University and has achieved certifications as 3rd class power engineer, Red Seal (inter-provincial) industrial mechanic (millwright), and Nova Scotia Construction Safety Association supervisor.

Stephen Girard MET, EET
Vice President, Operations

With over 15 years of field experience in various global off-shore companies, Steve has become a renowned subsea robotics specialist, tackling the most difficult subsea tasks for extremely high-value assets: oilfield construction, intervention, survey, inspections and routine installation for operations in Canada, USA, UK, Angola, Ghana and Nigeria.

Born in Toronto, Steve has spent the majority of his career in the Maritimes including his time at the Nova Scotia Community College-Institute of Technology. He has worked in Halifax with various engineering and design firms before heading offshore. He specializes in mechanics, electronics, hydraulics, high voltage electrics, various tooling packages, acquisition sensors, computing and software.  Steve heads the technology division at LeeWay Marine, with a focus on subsea operations and lifting and handling solutions.

Don Grant, B.A., B.ED, J.D.
Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs

Don has extensive experience in business development and law. Don has worked in private practice and as in-house counsel with a large multinational corporation and through those experiences has a comprehensive understanding of corporate and marine law.


Fatih Guvenen

Personal Website

Fatih Guvenen joined the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis as a visiting scholar in 2008. He is currently a consultant in the Research Department and is a professor of economics at the University of Minnesota.

Fatih received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in economics from Carnegie Mellon University. He also holds a B.Sc. in electrical and electronics engineering from Bilkent University (Turkey). He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (EF&G Program) and served as an advisor to the Central Bank of Turkey from 2013 to 2015.

Fatih’s current research focuses on topics at the intersection of macroeconomics and inequality, including the causes and consequences of wage and earnings inequality, how rising wage dispersion among workers is linked to rising dispersion among their employers, and how individual-level wage and earnings risk varies over the life cycle and over the business cycle.

Fatih is an associate editor for the Review of Economic Dynamics and the Journal of Monetary Economics. Fatih’s work has appeared in a number of prominent economics journals, including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Journal of Monetary Economics. He has a forthcoming book with Princeton University Press, entitled Quantitative Economics with Heterogeneity: An A-to-Z Guidebook.

Offshore Profit Shifting and Domestic Productivity Measurement

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21034/wp.751

Firming Up Inequality

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21034/wp.750

Top Income Inequality in the 21st Century: Some Cautionary Notes

We revisit recent empirical evidence about the rise in top income inequality in the United States, drawing attention to key issues that we believe are critical for an informed discussion about changing inequality since 1980: the definition of income (labor versus total), the unit of analysis (individual versus tax unit), the importance of partnership and S-corporation income, income shifting between the corporate and personal sectors in response to tax incentives, the definition of the top of the distribution, and trends in the middle and bottom of the distribution. Our goal is to inform researchers, policymakers, and journalists who are interested in top income inequality.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21034/qr.3811

Understanding Income Risk: New Insights from Big Data

Income inequality is a topic of much research and heated debate—concern well warranted given the substantial and continuing rise in inequality over the past four decades. But income risk—intimately related and arguably of equal concern to workers, families and firms—has received far less attention. This essay seeks to redress that imbalance. It provides a close look at income risk, discussing findings from recent research that uses innovative technique and draws upon a wealth of new data.

Worker Betas: Five Facts about Systematic Earnings Risk

Multidimensional Skill Mismatch

What determines the earnings of a worker relative to his peers in the same occupation? What makes a worker fail in one occupation but succeed in another? More broadly, what are the factors that determine the productivity of a worker-occupation match? In this paper, we propose an empirical measure of skill mismatch for a worker-occupation match, which sheds light on these questions. This measure is based on the discrepancy between the portfolio of skills required by an occupation and the portfolio of abilities possessed by a worker for learning those skills. This measure arises naturally in a dynamic model of occupational choice and human capital accumulation with multidimensional skills and Bayesian learning about one’s ability to learn these skills. In this model, mismatch is central to the career outcomes of workers: it reduces the returns to occupational tenure, and it predicts occupational switching behavior. We construct our empirical analog by combining data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) on workers, and the O*NET on occupations. Our empirical results show that the effects of mismatch on wages are large and persistent: mismatch in occupations held early in life has a strong negative effect on wages in future occupations. Skill mismatch also significantly increases the probability of an occupational switch and predicts its direction in the skill space. These results provide fresh evidence on the importance of skill mismatch for the job search process.

We study the evolution of individual labor earnings over the life cycle using a large panel data set of earnings histories drawn from U.S. administrative records. Using fully nonparametric methods, our analysis reaches two broad conclusions. First, earnings shocks display substantial deviations from lognormality–the standard assumption in the incomplete markets literature. In particular, earnings shocks display strong negative skewness and extremely high kurtosis–as high as 30 compared with 3 for a Gaussian distribution. The high kurtosis implies that in a given year, most individuals experience very small earnings shocks, and a small but non-negligible number experience very large shocks. Second, these statistical properties vary significantly both over the life cycle and with the earnings level of individuals. We also estimate impulse response functions of earnings shocks and find important asymmetries: positive shocks to high-income individuals are quite transitory, whereas negative shocks are very persistent; the opposite is true for low-income individuals. Finally, we use these rich sets of moments to estimate econometric processes with increasing generality to capture these salient features of earnings dynamics.

The Glass Ceiling and the Paper Floor: Gender Differences among Top Earners, 1981-2012

Inferring Labor Income Risk and Partial Insurance From Economic Choices

This paper uses the information contained in the joint dynamics of individuals’ labor earnings and consumption-choice decisions to quantify both the amount of income risk that individuals face and the extent to which they have access to informal insurance against this risk. We accomplish this task by using indirect inference to estimate a structural consumption-savings model, in which individuals both learn about the nature of their income process and partly insure shocks via informal mechanisms. In this framework, we estimate (i) the degree of partial insurance, (ii) the extent of systematic differences in income growth rates, (iii) the precision with which individuals know their own income growth rates when they begin their working lives, (iv) the persistence of typical labor income shocks, (v) the tightness of borrowing constraints, and (vi) the amount of measurement error in the data. In implementing indirect inference, we find that an auxiliary model that approximates the true structural equations of the model (which are not estimable) works very well, with negligible small sample bias. The main substantive findings are that income shocks are not very persistent, systematic differences in income growth rates are large, individuals have substantial amounts of information about their income growth rates, and about one-half of income shocks are effectively smoothed via partial insurance. Putting these findings together, we argue that the amount of uninsurable lifetime income risk that individuals perceive is substantially smaller than what is typically assumed in calibrated macroeconomic models with incomplete markets.

Women’s Emancipation through Education: A Macroeconomic Analysis

In this paper, we study the role of education as insurance against a bad marriage. Historically, due to disparities in earning power and education across genders, married women often found themselves in an economically vulnerable position, and had to suffer one of two fates in a bad marriage: either they get divorced (assuming it is available) and struggle as low-income single mothers, or they remain trapped in the marriage. In both cases, education can provide a route to emancipation for women. To investigate this idea, we build and estimate an equilibrium search model with education, marriage/divorce/remarriage, and household labor supply decisions. A key feature of the model is that women bear a larger share of the divorce burden, mainly because they are more closely tied to their children relative to men. Our focus on education is motivated by the fact that divorce laws typically allow spouses to keep the future returns from their human capital upon divorce (unlike their physical assets), making education a good insurance against divorce risk. However, as women further their education, the earnings gap between spouses shrinks, leading to more unstable marriages and, in turn, further increasing demand for education. The framework generates powerful amplification mechanisms, which lead to a large rise in divorce rates and a decline in marriage rates (similar to those observed in the US data) from relatively modest exogenous driving forces. Further, in the model, women overtake men in college attainment during the 1990s, a feature of the data that has proved challenging to explain. Our counterfactual experiments indicate that the divorce law reform of the 1970s played an important role in all of these trends, explaining more than one-quarter of college attainment rate of women post-1970s and one-half of the rise in labor supply for married women.

The Nature of Countercyclical Income Risk

This paper studies the nature of business cycle variation in individual earnings risk using a confidential dataset from the U.S. Social Security Administration, which contains (uncapped) earnings histories for millions of individuals. The base sample is a nationally representative panel containing 10 percent of all U.S. males from 1978 to 2010. We use these data to decompose individual earnings growth during recessions into “between-group” and “within-group” components. We begin with the behavior of within-group shocks. Contrary to past research, we do not find the variance of idiosyncratic earnings shocks to be countercyclical. Instead, it is the left-skewness of shocks that is strongly countercyclical. That is, during recessions, the upper end of the shock distribution collapses—large upward earnings movements become less likely—whereas the bottom end expands—large drops in earnings become more likely. Thus, while the dispersion of shocks does not increase, shocks become more left-skewed and, hence, risky during recessions. Second, to study between-group differences, we group individuals based on several observable characteristics at the time a recession hits. One of these characteristics—the average earnings of an individual at the beginning of a business cycle episode—proves to be an especially good predictor of fortunes during a recession: prime-age workers that enter a recession with high average earnings suffer substantially less compared with those who enter with low average earnings (which is not the case during expansions). Finally, we find that the cyclical nature of earnings risk is dramatically different for the top 1 percent compared with all other individuals—even relative to those in the top 2 to 5 percent.

Inferring Labor Income Risk from Economic Choices: An Indirect Inference Approach

This paper uses the information contained in the joint dynamics of households’ labor earnings and consumption-choice decisions to quantify the nature and amount of income risk that households face. We accomplish this task by estimating a structural consumption-savings model using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Consumer Expenditure Survey. Specifically, we estimate the persistence of labor income shocks, the extent of systematic differences in income growth rates, the fraction of these systematic differences that households know when they begin their working lives, and the amount of measurement error in the data. Although data on labor earnings alone can shed light on some of these dimensions, to assess what households know about their income processes requires using the information contained in their economic choices (here, consumption-savings decisions). To estimate the consumption-savings model, we use indirect inference, a simulation method that puts virtually no restrictions on the structural model and allows the estimation of income processes from economic decisions with general specifications of utility, frequently binding borrowing constraints, and missing observations. The main substantive findings are that income shocks are not very persistent, systematic differences in income growth rates are large, and individuals have substantial amounts of information about their future income prospects. Consequently, the amount of uninsurable lifetime income risk that households perceive is substantially smaller than what is typically assumed in calibrated macroeconomic models with incomplete markets.

A Parsimonious Macroeconomic Model for Asset Pricing

I study asset prices in a two-agent macroeconomic model with two key features: limited stock market participation and heterogeneity in the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption (EIS). The model is consistent with some prominent features of asset prices, such as a high equity premium; relatively smooth interest rates; procyclical stock prices; and countercyclical variation in the equity premium, its volatility, and in the Sharpe ratio. In this model, the risk-free asset market plays a central role by allowing non-stockholders (with low EIS) to smooth the fluctuations in their labor income. This process concentrates non-stockholders’ labor income risk among a small group of stockholders, who then demand a high premium for bearing the aggregate equity risk. Furthermore, this mechanism is consistent with the very small share of aggregate wealth held by non-stockholders in the US data, which has proved problematic for previous models with limited participation. I show that this large wealth inequality is also important for the model’s ability to generate a countercyclical equity premium. When it comes to business cycle performance the model’s progress has been more limited: consumption is still too volatile compared to the data, whereas investment is still too smooth. These are important areas for potential improvement in this framework.

In this paper, we construct a parsimonious overlapping-generations model of human capital accumulation and study its quantitative implications for the evolution of the U.S. wage distribution from 1970 to 2000. A key feature of the model is that individuals differ in their ability to accumulate human capital, which is the main source of wage inequality in this model. We examine the response of this model to skill-biased technical change (SBTC), which is modeled as an increase in the trend growth rate of the price of human capital starting in the early 1970s. The model displays behavior that is consistent with several important trends observed in the US data, including the rise in overall wage inequality; the fall and subsequent rise in the college premium, as well as the fact that this behavior was most pronounced for younger workers; the rise in within-group inequality; the stagnation in median wage growth; and the small rise in consumption inequality despite the large rise in wage inequality. We consider different scenarios regarding how individuals’ expectations evolve during SBTC. Specifically, we study the case where individuals immediately realize the advent of SBTC (perfect foresight), and the case where they initially underestimate the future growth of the price of human capital (pessimistic priors), but learn the truth in a Bayesian fashion over time. Lack of perfect foresight appears to have little effect on the main results of the paper. Overall, the model shows promise for explaining a diverse set of wage distribution trends observed since the 1970s in a unifying human capital framework.

Joint-Search Theory: New Opportunities and New Frictions

Search theory routinely assumes that decisions about the acceptance/rejection of job offers (and, hence, about labor market movements between jobs or across employment states) are made by individuals acting in isolation. In reality, the vast majority of workers are somewhat tied to their partners—in couples and families—and decisions are made jointly. This paper studies, from a theoretical viewpoint, the joint job-search and location problem of a household formed by a couple (e.g., husband and wife) who perfectly pools income. The objective of the exercise, very much in the spirit of standard search theory, is to characterize the reservation wage behavior of the couple and compare it to the single-agent search model in order to understand the ramifica-tions of partnerships for individual labor market outcomes and wage dynamics. We focus on two main cases. First, when couples are risk averse and pool income, joint search yields new oppor-tunities—similar to on-the-job search—relative to the single-agent search. Second, when the two spouses in a couple face job offers from multiple locations and a cost of living apart, joint search features new frictions and can lead to significantly worse outcomes than single-agent search.

Learning Your Earning: Are Labor Income Shocks Really Very Persistent?

The current literature offers two views on the nature of the labor income process. According to the first view, which we call the “restricted income profiles” (RIP) model, individuals are subject to large and very persistent shocks while facing similar life-cycle income profiles (MaCurdy, 1982). According to the alternative view, which we call the “heterogeneous income profiles” (HIP) model, individuals are subject to income shocks with modest persistence while facing individual-specific income profiles (Lillard and Weiss, 1979). In this paper we study the restrictions imposed by the RIP and HIP models on consumption data—in the context of a life-cycle model—to distinguish between these two hypotheses. In the life-cycle model with a HIP process, which has not been studied in the previous literature, we assume that individuals enter the labor market with a prior belief about their individual-specific profile and learn over time in a Bayesian fashion. We find that learning is slow, and thus initial uncertainty affects decisions throughout the life cycle. The resulting HIP model is consistent with several features of consumption data including (i) the substantial rise in within-cohort consumption inequality, (ii) the non-concave shape of the age-inequality profile, and (iii) the fact that consumption profiles are steeper for higher educated individuals. The RIP model we consider is also consistent with (i), but not with (ii) and (iii). These results bring new evidence from consumption data on the nature of labor income risk.


March 2012 Download this article as a PDFAbstract

Technology entrepreneurs must create value for customers in order to generate revenue. This article examines the dimensions of customer value creation and provides a framework to help entrepreneurs, managers, and leaders of open source projects create value, with an emphasis on businesses that generate revenue from open source assets. The proposed framework focuses on a firm's pre-emptive value offering (also known as a customer value proposition). This is a firm's offering of the value it seeks to create for a customer, in order to meet his or her requirements.

A business model establishes how value is created for customers and a firm’s strategy to appropriate returns derived from that value. Typically, a business model identifies: i) the firm’s value propositions for customers, partners, and other stakeholders; ii) the processes and resources required to deliver these value propositions; iii) and a profit formula.

In the February issue of the TIM Review, the author described customer value and how it is delivered to customers (Shanker, 2012). In this article, the focus is on creating customer value, particularly in the context of businesses that generate revenue using open sources assets.

From a marketing theory perspective, customer value refers to customers’ perceptions of what they receive, in return for what they sacrifice (Zeithaml, 1988). There are two aspects to customer value: desired value and perceived value (Woodruff, 1997). Desired value refers to what a customer desires in a product or service. Perceived value is the benefit a customer believes he or she received from a product after it was purchased.

Customer value propositions are formulated by assessing the current market offerings, identifying what customers want, and then developing solutions that meet the market need for a product or service (Anderson et al., 2006). Figure 1 illustrates the customer value creation strategy; it is the author’s representation of the extant literature.

Figure 1. A firm's value creation strategy

When a firm uses a proprietary software business model, value is created by producing specific software that fulfils a customer’s need to get a job done or solve a problem. Value may be appropriated using patents and licenses may be required to use the software.

When a firm uses open source software to satisfy customer’s needs, value is captured in different ways because the supplier cannot charge for the software. This article reviews current customer value creation strategies and then proposes a value-creation framework for suppliers that rely on open source software to generate revenue.

Value Creation Frameworks

To develop a value-creation strategy, a firm must first identify what points of value their potential customers seek. Next, the firm develops a pre-emptive strategy to provide those benefits (O’Cass and Ngo , 2011).

Value-creation strategies focus on the various dimensions along which customers perceive value. Ulaga (2003) identified eight dimensions of value creation in a business-to-business context: product quality, service support, delivery performance, supplier know-how, time-to-market, personal interaction, price, and process costs. While Ulaga focused on relationship value (i.e., manufacturer-supplier relationships), his eight dimensions also apply to an open source context because most consumers or end-customers of commercial open source software are businesses.

Smith and Colgate (2007) proposed a customer-value creation framework that identifies four main types of value that can be created by organizations:

  1. Functional/instrumental value: the attributes of the product itself; the extent to which a product is useful and fulfills a customer’s desired goals
  2. Experiential/hedonic value: the extent to which a product creates appropriate experiences, feelings, and emotions for the customer
  3. Symbolic/expressive value: the extent to which customers attach or associate psychological meaning to a product
  4. Cost/sacrifice value: the cost or sacrifice that would be associated with the use of the product

Smith and Colgate proposed their framework as a tool for marketing strategists to develop creative product concepts and recognize new product opportunities. The sources of value identified have to be appropriate and applicable to the context in which they are used. Smith and Colgate’s value-creation framework must be adapted to the context of open source software because open source is most attractive to businesses and expert users, such as universities and hobbyist programmers (West, 2007). Some components of the framework might not apply in this context. For example, experiential value is more of an individual assessment than a firm-level assessment. Similarly, symbolic value components such as self-identity, personal meaning, and self-expression, would only apply in cases where the end-customer was an individual user.

O’Cass and Ngo (2011) assert that a firm’s pre-emptive value-creation strategy is comprised of:

  1. Performance value: this component is associated with the product attributes and the attributes’ performance. This relationship was also noted Woodruff (1997).
  2. Pricing value: this component can refer to the fair price or the value price. The fair price refers to customers believing they are paying a fair price for a product or service; the value price refers to a price that justifies the benefits of purchasing a product.
  3. Relationship value: this component refers to the firm’s efforts to create and deliver a hassle-free purchase and consumption experience.
  4. Co-creation value: this component is added when customers find it beneficial to influence various parts of the business system to co-create or co-produce their own unique purchase and consumption experience.

Value Creation in Open Source

Value-creation frameworks and strategies rely on combining the resources and capabilities of a firm. These resources and capabilities are considered to be valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable because they provide a sustainable competitive advantage for a firm (Landroguez et al., 2011).

Firms that produce open source software and related services do not always rely solely on open source software. They usually combine proprietary and open source offerings and employ hybrid business models to deliver greater value to customers (West, 2003; Bonaccorsi et al., 2006). A network of developers (who may be internal and external to the firm), collaborates to produce open source software. Firms that use open source software as one of their resources to create value for customers can use the attributes of open source software to create a competitive advantage. For example, West (2007) recognizes that firms can create value for customers by providing software at lower prices through the use of open source software as one of their resource components.

In addition to a different value creation strategy for producers of open source software, the impact on customer value perceptions also changes with open source. Customers can engage the open source community, influence the direction of the product offering, and increase their interoperability with other vendors by using the same common open source code base. Customer value perceptions in open source software therefore, will differ from proprietary software because customers derive value along additional dimensions that do not apply in proprietary software development models.

The literature on customer value creation in open source software is still very new and few authors have addressed the creation of value in the open source software development model, with the exception of West (2007) and Morgan and Finnegan (2008).

Some of the key attributes of customer value creation that need to be considered when developing a framework are:

  1. Customers perceive value from product attributes, from the consequences of using a product, and from whether they achieve their desired goals (Woodruff, 1997).
  2. For a convincing customer value proposition, a firm needs to identify how value is perceived by customers and then offer those identified points of value in terms of a pre-emptive value offering (O’Cass and Ngo, 2011).
  3. A value creation framework should identify the various types of value (Smith and Colgate, 2007; O’Cass and Ngo, 2011).

A Proposed Customer-Value Creation Framework

Figure 2 illustrates the author’s proposed customer-value creation framework. A firm’s value offering is organized into the categories of value creation that apply to a context where one of the firm’s resources is open source software. Using the value offering, firms must create a customer value proposition that fulfills customer needs. Figure 2 identifies the characteristics of a customer value proposition that can be used to fulfill customer needs.

Figure 2. Creating a customer value proposition

Firm’s value offering

1. Functional value: The product attributes that help create value, as identified by Morgan and Finnegan (2008), are: cost, quality, reliability, security, and performance. These attributes of open source software are features of the product itself; they do not focus on other dimensions of value creation such as attribute consequences and goals. Woodruff’s (1997) customer value hierarchy identifies that customers perceive value not only from the attributes of a product itself but also from the consequences of using a product and the goals achieved by it.

2. Cost/sacrifice value: Customer value perception is often defined as a customer’s evaluation of what they get in return for what they give (Zeithaml, 1988). The cost/sacrifice value identifies the customer’s perception of whether the value created is worth the cost paid. The cost paid can be in monetary terms, time, effort spend defining requirements, or any other way in which the customer invests in a firm’s offering. The commoditization of open source software allows suppliers to provide undifferentiated software at a lower price point, thereby increasing the customer perception of value added (West, 2007).

3. Relationship value: this is refers to the overall customer experience during interactions with the supplier. Value can be added to a relationship along dimensions such as product quality, service support, delivery performance, supplier know-how, time-to-market, personal interaction, price, and process costs (Ulaga, 2003). Open source software can be combined with complementary assets such as support, customization, integration, or upgrades (West, 2007) to create value for customers. Such value-added offerings encourage customers to develop and maintain a relationship with suppliers to obtain a hassle-free purchase and consumption experience (O’Cass and Ngo, 2011). Firms that use open source software could also create value for their customers by re-using code and by reducing time to market and production costs;  these firms can then use this saved time and money towards enhancing business processes or employee development (Morgan and Finnegan, 2008).

4. Co-creation value: this is the value perceived in either modifying available source code or defining requirements that allow a product to be customized to meet a customer’s needs. It is the value customers perceive in having a say in a supplier’s manufacturing process (O’Cass and Ngo, 2011). The nature of open source software allows users to co-create value by actively participating in the development process.

5. Open source brand value:  this refers to the value that customers perceive in the open source brand itself. For example, value could be perceived by gaining legitimacy in the open source software community or by creating partnerships with other companies. Customer value creation strategies could change based on the extent to which open source resources are used in an offering (Bonaccorsi et. al., 2006). For example, the value in a pure open source offering could be in the supplier’s ability to customize without incurring high marginal costs.

Customer value proposition

A customer value proposition can be developed based on the points of value that a firm can create (and that matter to customers). In this respect, a customer value proposition must provide distinctive, measurable, and sustainable value (Anderson et al., 2006). A distinctive value proposition is superior to the competitor’s offering, a measurable value proposition allows customers to quantify value in monetary terms, and a sustainable value proposition ensures that customers can continue to provide value to customers. A customer value proposition can be constructed by identifying the barriers that limit customers from getting a job done. The four most common barriers identified by Johnson, Christiansen, and Kagermann (2008) are insufficient wealth, access, skill, and time.

Customer research

To determine what customers want, what job they need to get done, and what barriers they face, a firm needs to conduct customer value research. Based on customer data, firms should then refine their value creation strategy to provide value along the dimensions of value that customers identify as important to them.

The value creation framework proposed here focuses on the creation of value from an open source business model perspective. The framework can be used in at least three ways. First, it can be used as a guideline for customer value research by manufacturers to assess what points of value matter to customers. Second, it can be used by managers and leaders of open source software projects to determine the points of value that their products and offerings should focus on. Third, managers and leaders can use the customer value dimensions outlined in the framework to compete along dimensions other than cost.

The level of formal appropriability or control that a firm has over its open source resources impacts the extent to which a firm can capture value from open source software. Therefore, value creation strategies would also be influenced by the degree to which a firm is involved in an open source software project. Future value creation frameworks could take that factor into account because it impacts the resources and capabilities that a firm has at its disposal.

The proposed value creation framework can be refined by conducting customer research to: i) validate the points of value creation identified; ii) determine new dimensions of value creation; and iii) assess the relative importance of each dimension of value from a customer’s perspective.

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Keywords: customer value, customer value creation, open source business, technology entrepreneurship, value proposition

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King Of Gods Chapter 763

Chapter 763 - Escaping from the Shell

On this day, an arc of lightning entered the limitless ocean.

A purple-haired youth was floating in the air, and a small silver-gray cat sat on his shoulder. He gave one last deep glance toward the Azure Flower Continent before scarlet wings formed behind his back as he headed out.

The human and cat were obviously Zhao Feng and the little thieving cat.

When his cultivation dropped to the half-step King realm, Zhao Feng found that all his aspects were weakening even quicker than before. Void God Realm Kings had stronger resistance against the Cursed Words of Death. In other words, if an Ascended Realm cultivator was hit by the Cursed Words of Death, they would turn into a pile of white bones immediately.

This made Zhao Feng feel a sense of urgency.

I need to go to the continent zone while I still have some strength, Zhao Feng murmured.

The Sage had told him three ways to resolve the Cursed Words of Death, and the third method required a heavy price.

The first two werent very realistic, but they were only even possible in the continent zone. Apart from that, he also wanted to go there in order to find Duanmu Qing and Zhao Yufei.

Due to all of that, Zhao Feng had to go to the continent zone.

A few days later, Zhao Feng reached the Void Ocean Spiritual Palace of the Azure Green Islands Zone. The Azure Flower Continent was within the Azure Green Islands Zone, and next to it was the Tianlu Islands.

Normal people wouldnt have the right to use the teleportation array, but Zhao Feng was a disciple of the three-star Mystic True Sacred Clan, and he would also have the right to do so if he released his Emperor Intent the strong ruled this world.

Of course, using the teleportation array cost a large amount of Primal Crystal Stones, and it was limited in distance. He could only teleport to the nearby Void Ocean Spiritual Palaces. Only after several teleportations did Zhao Feng reach the True Martial Sacred Land.

After reaching the True Martial Sacred Land, Zhao Fengs gaze couldnt help but turn toward the Ten Thousand Ancient Sacred Peak. The Spiritual Zone Teleportation Array and many inheritances both big and small were on the Ten Thousand Ancient Sacred Peak.

Zhao Feng was suspicious about whether the child Demigod had any way to enter the Demigod Forgotten Garden. After all, the child Demigod had Demigod Intent. Of course, even if Zhao Feng could confirm that the child Demigod was hiding in the Demigod Forgotten Garden, Zhao Feng couldnt do anything about it.

Zhao Feng didnt stay in the True Martial Sacred Land for long. He soon used the Spiritual Zone Teleportation Array to reach the Floating Dream Sacred Land.

There are three spiritual zones in the Cang Ocean, and the border of the Floating Dream Sacred Land is closest to the Nanlin Sea.

A map appeared in Zhao Fengs mind. The Nanlin Sea was close to the southern part of the continent zone, whereas the Cang Ocean was further away and out of the Lord Dynastys reach. This meant that, as long as Zhao Feng entered the Nanlin Sea, he would be at the border of the continent zone, where the forces of the Lord Dynasty would be stronger.

Zhao Feng used the Spiritual Zone Teleportation Array and reached the edge of the Floating Dream Spiritual Zone.

Zhao Feng was running low on Primal Crystal Stones, so he asked Emperor Zi Mu for some.

When he met Emperor Zi Mu, Zhao Feng concealed his aura but didnt hide his Emperor Intent. Emperor Zi Mu didnt think too much about it, and since he wanted to build a good relationship with Zhao Feng anyway, he obviously gave him a lot of Primal Crystal Stones.

Emperor Zhao, the name of the Left-Eyed Heavenly Emperor in the Cang Ocean can make Gods and Ghosts alike retreat. Even Mystic Light Realm Sacred Lords are wary of you, Emperor Zi Mu was filled with respect, but he didnt know that Zhao Fengs cultivation had already fallen back to the Great Origin Core Realm.

Zhao Feng didnt stay too long with Emperor Zi Mu. He said that he had some urgent matters that he needed to attend to, then quickly left.

One day, Zhao Feng appeared in the furthest Void Ocean Spiritual Palace of the Floating Dream Spiritual Zone.

Void Ocean Spiritual Zones were commonly used within the limitless ocean. Apparently, this was an order by the Lord Dynasty after they conquered the continent and the surrounding seas. However, the Lord Dynasty had basically lost control of the Cang Ocean and only had some slight power in the Nanlin Sea.

The resources of the Nanlin Sea surpassed the Cang Ocean, and it had four Spiritual Zone Sacred Lands.

The journey from the Nanlin Sea to the continent zone is long, Zhao Feng sighed in his heart.

After his cultivation dropped down to the Origin Core Realm, his soul power started weakening much faster. His soul was still at the middle stages of the Void God Realm, but it was much weaker than his peak.

If my soul drops to the Origin Core Realm, my Emperor Intent will most likely fall asleep, Zhao Feng became even more impatient.

Emperor Intent was based on the soul. If ones soul power wasnt strong enough, then Emperor Intent would fall asleep and only start to reawaken when the soul became stronger. After all, Intent was based upon comprehension and understanding, but it still required fuel. The Cursed Words of Death couldnt affect ones comprehension, so Emperor Intent wouldnt disappear, but it couldnt function without enough soul power.

Zhao Feng kept using the Void Ocean Spiritual Palaces after reaching the Nanlin Sea. As long as he still had his Emperor Intent, the Palace Lords would give him face.

Many of the Palace Lords were Kings the progress of cultivation here was slightly stronger than the Cang Ocean.

Half a month later, Zhao Feng passed through a Spiritual Zone Sacred Land in the Nanlin Sea, and part of his Intent was sealed, leaving him with only King Intent. His soul power had finally dropped.

However, Kings were still pretty powerful even in the Nanlin Sea. The Palace Lords would usually allow him through after seeing such a young King.

The weakening of my cultivation and soul is becoming faster and faster, Zhao Feng felt solemn and guessed that his cultivation would drop to the True Spirit Realm before he even reached the continent zone.

Once he reached the True Spirit Realm, the rate of weakening would become several times faster. This meant that Zhao Feng had to make some preparations.

Within the purple Soul Sea, Zhao Fengs soul power was much weaker than the past, and the Soul Sea had shrunk to only a few hundred yards. However, the pathway to the Ancient Dream Realm wasnt affected by the Cursed Words of Death. Apart from that, there were eight hundred mysterious lightning symbols that radiated an undying and immortal aura.

The Gods Spiritual Eye and the God Tribulation Lightning are the parts that arent affected, Zhao Feng let out a breath.

With his Gods Spiritual Eye, he could see that there were wisps of black blood in the other parts of his body. This dark power affected both the physical and mental energy dimensions, and soul attacks were ineffective against it.

While he still had King Intent, Zhao Feng kept on journeying forward.

Two months later, a dim arc of lightning landed on the ground. The nearby Origin Core Realm Sovereigns were slightly curious when he passed through the barrier.

A measly True Spirit Realm can pass through the barrier? an elder at the Small Origin Core Realm was surprised.

This place wasnt the continent zone, it was a large great island zone. It was called the Tianfeng Great Island Zone, and it had more than a dozen island zones similar to the Azure Islands Zone.

Apparently, this Great Island Zone was ruled by a Marquess.

An elder as skinny as a stick surrounded by Wind Lightning entered this great island zone in the Nanlin Sea. The appearance of this elder was similar to Zhao Feng.

Miao miao!

A little silver-gray cat stood on the elders shoulder and waved its paws with excitement.

Little thieving cat, Im already like this. Why are you so excited? Zhao Feng said in a depressed tone.

Over 95% of his lifespan and lifeforce was gone. His cultivation had dropped to the True Spirit Realm, and over 90% of his Emperor Intent had fallen asleep.

Looks like I wont be able to make it to the continent zone in time. Ill need to give it my all, Zhao Feng sighed.

Luckily, he had put the ancient metal ring and some over treasures into the dimension of his left eye.

Go! Zhao Fengs soul and body burned into a pile of ashes amidst the blaze of Wind Lightning.

The burning of his life and soul created a strong surge of energy.

God Eye leaving the body! a perfect purple-colored eye that existed between the physical and mental worlds entered inland at a speed faster than Emperors.

Zhao Fengs lifeforce and True Yuan was completely destroyed. The Cursed Words of Death disappeared along with them.

A puddle of black blood turned into nothing and disappeared.

Zhao Fengs Gods Spiritual Eye and God Tribulation Lightning were unaffected by the Cursed Words of Death, otherwise, even if he gave up his physical body, he wouldnt have been able to escape the Cursed Words of Death.

Using the third method of escaping my shell I finally managed to escape the Cursed Words of Death. Zhao Feng let out a breath.

His senses were extremely strong since his Gods Eye left his body, and he instantly scanned over several dozens of thousands of miles.

At the same moment in time, within a quiet forest:

Youre youre from the Yin family! a pale-faced youth held a broken sword and barely managed to hold up his body. Next to him was the body of some kind of tiger that used to be at the True Spirit Realm before it was killed.

Zhao Feng*, youre a once-in-a-thousand-years genius of the Zhao family who joined the Ten Thousand Sacred Clan, breaking through to the True Spirit Realm at the age of fourteen. This is a massive threat to the Yin family.

Hehe, if it wasnt for the fact that you entered the Wuyou Forest, we wouldnt have had this chance.

Several figures with masks on said in a cold and smug tone. One of them had even reached the True Lord Rank.

Arghh! the youth called Zhao Feng screamed as he was sent flying with one palm from a masked male.

Boss, this brats dead.

Not good, the disciples of the Ten Thousand Sacred Clan are coming.

An elder gave the order to retreat.

Right at this moment, a purple flash of lightning passed through the air above the Wuyou Forest.

An incredible scene happened. The eye of the youth called Zhao Feng that just died turned purple and gave off a strong Intent before quickly fading.

TL Note*: The Zhao Feng that died was called , not . The pinyin and pronunciation for the two are the same but the words are different.
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How autonomous ridesharing will reshape our cars, cities, and lives

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Digital Trends recently attended Semicon West, a semiconductor industry conference, and we focused on how this foundational technology industry is helping disrupt the transportation sector. Presenters and panels offered a variety of plans and visions for the next generation of technological advances in mobility.

One such panel focused on how the industry would likely disrupt transportation in a number of ways. Speakers agreed there are four main drivers of disruption in transportation and mobility today: autonomy, electrification, connectivity, and shared mobility.

“What is going to happen with the industry? Who’s the one to figure this out?”

“Those trends are not possible without each other, and they are accelerating each other,” said Andreas Breiter, associate partner at McKinsey & Company, a large global business consulting firm with offices in more than 120 cities around the world.

Kamal Khouri is vice president and general manager of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems for NXP Semiconductors, the largest semiconductor provider for automotive OEMs in the world.

“It’s an exciting time,” Khouri maintained. “It’s unique to have all these megatrends converge on a single market. We’re in the middle of developing a technology that has a tremendous impact on our planet and on humanity. We’re introducing all these technologies and there’s this race: who’s going to get there first? How will we get seamless connectivity so we can use our time in the vehicle? Especially with the introduction of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), it makes the challenge of providing a safe and secure solution a difficult problem.”

Ridesharing needs autonomous cars

Breiter conceded we haven’t answered all the key questions yet. “What is going to happen with the industry? Who’s the one to figure this out? Is it an existing automaker OEM or is it a revolutionary approach from an outsider who will turn the industry upside down? One thing that could be a stepping-stone is a purpose-built vehicle for ridesharing. Why is your shared ride a standard car, and not purpose-built for taxi service?”

Purpose-built taxis have been around as long as the automobile but have fallen out of favor in recent decades. The venerable Checker Marathon and the London Taxi were both designed for ridesharing and survived mostly unchanged for decades.

“As soon as autonomy comes through and is really viable, it will significantly increase the business case for shared mobility,” Breiter predicted. “As soon as you get the driver out of your shared taxi, you have a completely different business case. Then, shared mobility without connectivity is not even thinkable.”

Ridesharing requires connectivity

Most people tend to think about vehicle connectivity in terms of using a phone in the car or getting a restaurant through an app on the dashboard. In fact, it runs much deeper than that, especially when autonomy and shared mobility are in the picture. The shared mobility revolution is dependent on both autonomy and connectivity, because the rider must hail the car, and the car must be there, and it must respond in an accurate and timely manner.

“The big transitions in industry always start with the user interface. …We’re trying to do exactly the same thing in our area.”

“We are creating mobility platforms that provide enjoyable time on the move, so the key message is that we’re mainly focusing on the time the customer spends in the car,” said Dr. Dirk Abendroth, vice president of Autonomous Driving and Powertrain at Byton, a Chinese automaker with offices in California and Munich, Germany.

Abendroth spent 12 years at BMW developing hybrid and electric powertrains, specifically for the i3 and the i8.

“We try to differentiate in this, but not in the traditional competitions like acceleration or just building a car,” he stated. “We’re trying to rethink the program from a customer point of view and thinking about what we should do with the time on board.”

defining self driving autonomous car roadrave seniorselfdrive 01
Self-driving BMW

Abendroth believes the user interface will be a big differentiator in future vehicles.

“The big transitions in industry always start with the user interface,” he pointed out. “For example, mobile phones transitioned to smart phones. The first thing to change was the interface, and the apps came later. We’re trying to do exactly the same thing in our area. From the interface, all the other things come one by one.”

That’s not the only lesson Abendroth draws from the mobile revolution.

“The growth in automotive is coming from those high-income dense cities and low-income dense cities outside of Europe and North America.”

“The second part is personalization,” he said. “One of the most useful things about your smart phone is that it’s tailored to you. When you turn it on, it has your exact profile; no one else has exactly the same settings. We’re trying to rethink the entire vehicle. There’s a direct connection between autonomy and connectivity in making use of the time in the car. When autonomy comes, we can have other opportunities.”

Ridesharing shapes urban evolution

McKinsey’s Breiter has been looking into the impact that ridesharing could have on the evolution of cities and mobility around the world. One unexpected finding is that shared transportation will not differentiate along national boundaries as much as it will between cities, suburbs, and rural areas.

top tech stories 06 30 2017 what is a smart city series introduction

“We can no longer look at countries,” Breiter said. “We have to be more granular. We think the driver of growth in mobility is on the city level. If we categorize the cities of the world, we get different archetypes. One dimension is income level and another one is how dense is the city. Are we talking about the very dense core of a city or are we talking about urban sprawl? The growth in automotive is coming from those high-income dense cities and low-income dense cities outside of Europe and North America. Those are the growth engines of the future. We’re focused on how those types of cities will develop.”

Breiter offered details to describe how future shared mobility will help shape the cities in the coming years.

“You’d have public transportation to get you out of the city core, but public transportation will not be sufficient. “

“In a city that’s developed and has a dense core, you could see a scenario of seamless mobility where people switch between different modes of transportation seamlessly. If you go out to the suburbs of those cities, you could have a scenario of private autonomy. If you go to the developing world, you’ll have more focus on shared mobility, and on making the place cleaner.”

How will this affect the currently developed world?  How does Breiter imagine the transportation solution for a dense city in Europe or North America developing in the next decades?

“People will switch between modes of transportation. People could switch from public transit to autonomous ride-sharing solutions or even take bicycles. If you go to the outside of those cities, the picture changes. You’d have public transportation to get you out of the city core, but public transportation will not be sufficient. You’ll have private cars and privately-owned shared autonomous cars.”

Ridesharing drives auto sales

At first, ridesharing doesn’t seem like it would change the automobile market. But the phenomenon is shaking up the mobility industry as profoundly as anything, and it could ultimately change the way cars are designed, built, and distributed.

Car dealership with a sports car and salesman pitching to a customer
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

“A lot of people think the mobility sector is in decline but we see a different story,” Breiter told the audience at Semicon. “We believe we’ll still see growth, but slower than it has been in the past. It will be coming from outside of Europe and North America.”

Ridesharing, both with privately-owned vehicles and with fleets owned by the automakers or other corporate entities, is likely to change the nature of automobile use and ownership first.

83% of people who use ridesharing services do so because it’s convenient

“We think ridesharing and e-hailing will have an impact,” Breiter said. “There will be fewer private vehicles, but there will be a counterbalancing effect of new shared vehicles. These shared vehicles will have a shorter lifetime because they’ll be used much more.”

For automakers, the ridesharing revolution offers huge potential. Putting customers into ridesharing cars exposes them to the car’s brand and may create future customers.

“There’s an opportunity to grow the auto market by getting into the ridesharing business,” Breiter insisted. “Building and selling cars is no longer enough. Increased focus on the customer and what’s affordable and convenient for them is required in a changing world.”

Ridesharing is still growing

One thing that’s certain, according to Breiter, is that ridesharing will continue to grow.

“We’ve asked a lot of people in different markets what they thought about shared mobility. 83% of people who use ridesharing services do so because it’s convenient, and 67% of them want to increase the amount of ridesharing they do, so a big part of the market is still unaddressed, which is interesting because the market is already quite large and growing very fast.”

That’s how ridesharing is going to change the world.

Lyft and Aptiv’s self-driving car program has come a long way, but not far enough

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    Vortex-free high-Reynolds deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) via airfoil pillars

    Article obtained from Springer RSS Feed.

    One essential step in biosample analysis is the purification, separation, or fractionation of a biofluid prior to transport to the biosensor. Deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) has demonstrated the potential for continuous size-based separation of numerous medically relevant particles and organisms, such as circulating tumor cells, red blood cells, and even viral particles. Recently, high-throughput DLD separation has been demonstrated by utilizing higher flow rates, but this also results in changing separation dynamics as the Reynolds number (Re) increases. It has been observed that the critical diameter (Dc) for a DLD device decreases as Re climbs, and theorized that both streamline compression and vortex emergence may contribute to this phenomenon. The precise mechanism for this shift has been difficult to isolate, however, due to the coupled nature of vortex emergence and streamline compression in high-Re DLD devices with circular pillars. To decouple these effects, we have characterized the performance of a DLD device with symmetric airfoil pillars that do not produce vortices up to Re = 100. In demonstrating a complete particle trajectory shift at Re = 51, we have shown that vortex effects are not a predominant contributor to this Dc shift, thus streamline evolution is likely to be the primary mechanism. Furthermore, we have compared the performance of this device to a similar device with rotated pillars having a negative 15° angle of attack, and found that separation effectiveness declines as streamlines become highly asymmetric and small particles exhibit significant variation in their trajectories.

    Nov, 14 2018 |


Blended Learning

Combining the Power of Teachers with the Power of Technology

Blended Learning: A New Learning Dynamic

The field of education is constantly innovating, but one innovation in particular is generating a lot of excitement lately: blended learning. What is blended learning, and why is it the new buzzword in education?

What is Blended Learning?

The concept of “blended learning” is still maturing, but Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker provide a good working definition for it in their book, Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools:

“…a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through online learning with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace and at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home. The modalities along each student’s learning path in a course or subject are connected to provide an integrated learning experience.”1

What are the benefits of blended learning, and what does this new learning dynamic mean for students and teachers?

Increased Student Control

Students assume greater control and a more active role in their learning, some of which is done in the classroom with the teacher and/or fellow students and some done independently at a computer. Offering students choices in how they learn helps boost student interest and engagement.

Shift in the role of the teacher

As students become more self-reliant learners, teachers shift from knowledge providers to learning facilitators, coaches, and mentors, who are freer to circulate among students, observe them more closely, and give them the targeted support they need.

Personalized Student Learning

Data compiled from students’ work in software programs such as Reading Horizons Discovery™ and Reading Horizons Elevate™ provides detailed information on students’ struggles, so teachers can more effectively customize face-to-face instruction. Our software is adaptive, which helps personalize each student’s computer-based learning experience.

What is the Role of a Teacher ›

Technology has inevitably changed the learning dynamic of the classroom. But how does it affect what a teacher does? What role does a teacher play in a blended learning environment?

Click on the link above to learn more about a teacher’s role in blended learning.

Blended Learning Models ›

The problems, resources, and educational objectives of schools vary widely; a blended learning model that works in one school may not work as well in another. Fortunately, there are no fewer than 7 common models of blended learning that schools can choose from or combine to provide the best blend for their teachers and students.

Blended Learning Resources ›

Reading Horizons offers a variety of resources on blended learning. To gain a deeper understanding of this exciting innovation in education, click on the link above.

Blended Learning Videos

Our brief videos spotlight experienced educators discussing the features and benefits of blended learning and exploring how Reading Horizons can be used in a blended learning environment. Tap into their knowledge by clicking on the following videos.

    1. Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker, Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools (United States: Jossey-Bass, 2014), 54.

    The image on this page is an adaptation of a graphic originally appearing in the book Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools.

    Find the right blended learning model to use with your students.

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Today’s Wonder of the Day was inspired by anna from milwaky, WI. anna Wonders, “What is the smallest house in America?” Thanks for WONDERing with us, anna!

Do you like to play with dolls? Of course, some of our male Wonder Friends might say, “No!" But we bet everyone likes to play with dolls from time to time. They just might not always be called dolls. Sometimes we call them “action figures."

If you've ever played with dolls or action figures, you know that one of the most fun things to do with them is to create places for them to live. These might take the form of dollhouses or even more elaborate outdoor activity areas.

The charm of many toys kids enjoy is that they take real-world items and reduce them down to a manageable size to play with. We often call these smaller versions of things miniatures. In addition to dolls or action figures, you might also have played with various other types of miniatures, such as toy cars.

But how are these miniature versions of things made? Do toy companies use a shrink ray? Nope! It might sound like it should be easy to make a small version of something, but it can actually be quite difficult and take a lot of time to do correctly.

Someone making a miniature toy home — what we often call a dollhouse — must pay attention to all sorts of details. For example, scale is one important consideration.

If a door of a real house is 6 feet tall and the door on your dollhouse is 6 inches tall, you'll need to reduce everything else according to the same scaled set of dimensions for it to look right. The most common scale for adult collectors of dollhouses is 1:12 scale, which is also called one-inch scale where 1 foot of actual size is represented by 1 inch in the miniature version.

In addition, as you make things smaller, it can be easy to lose the intricate details that can easily be seen on something in its actual size. The best dollhouse makers spend hours creating miniature versions of everything within a house while maintaining all of the details of the original items.

Miniature homes have been hand-crafted for thousands of years. Some of the oldest examples have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs. More modern dollhouses date back over 400 years in Europe. The first dollhouses were all handmade, but over time they began to be made in factories and sold inexpensively in stores.

Today, making miniature dollhouses is a popular hobby for many adults. While some dollhouses are still made entirely by hand, others come in kits that can then be assembled over time. Interior decorations, such as furniture, dolls and household items, can be purchased at special hobby stores or made from scratch.

Wonder What's Next?

Tomorrow’s Wonder of the Day features an animal whose name you won’t soon forget!


A roleplay-oriented setup somewhat related to Roulette (especially Zero Escape Roulette) and Dinner games. The focus is on playing a game show that involves betraying the other characters, and on getting out alive.

How to playEdit

Here is a rules page.

Saved Game RecordsEdit

  • Here are the full game logs of a previous Dangan Unpopularity game, with Host Koizumi and Mole Ishimaru. (Some things happened outside of the logs in a Chatzy.)


Forbidden Feng Shui

By Alice Inoue Posted in: Go Ask AliceImprove

Balance, symmetry and placement are feng shui principles that the Forbidden City of China was built upon. Here’s how to mirror that mantra at home

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: I just heard from my friend that you went to the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, and gave a detailed talk to her group about how it was built completely based on feng shui. I would have loved to be there! Can you please share some of this information in one of your upcoming columns?

Thank you for asking. This trip was meaningful to me because when I first began to seriously study feng shui over a dozen years ago, I learned about the Forbidden City and how feng shui was incorporated into every facet of its development. It was interesting to learn about it in class, but to have the opportunity to visit the city in person was amazing. To prepare for this talk, I did some additional work and correlated many of the ancient, key feng shui principles shown in the city and related them to easy-to-implement concepts that you could use in your current environment. Today, I’ve chosen three key concepts that I’d love to share with you!

Condensed history of the Forbidden City

Built between 1406 and 1420, during the Ming Dynasty, the Forbidden City is where the emperors of each dynasty ruled the country and the members of their court (mostly 7,000 eunuchs and about 3,000 concubines) lived. It was built with the intent to be not only the most powerful place on earth, but also the “center of the universe” and a place where the rulers could rule most effectively. The complex is huge — close to eight million square feet — and comprised of 980 buildings and 9,999 rooms.

Using feng shui came into play when in the early 1400s, during the reign of Emperor Yong Lo, he called together 80 of the highest-ranked feng shui masters in the country to collaborate and create a master plan for a complex that would allow China to have the greatest energetic benefit. They used every known feng shui principle to create a place on earth that would reflect and match the divine power and order of the heavens above.

Why is it called the “Forbidden” City?

The emperors allowed into the city only members of the court and those who lived there. Any intruder or trespasser was punished by a torturous death through a method called, “Death by a Thousand Cuts,” where chunks of tissue were taken out of the “criminal,” while avoiding vital organs so that the person remained awake until finally dying. Nonetheless, many people were curious about what was happening inside the city and broke in to get a glimpse of this mysterious place.

How feng shui was used

When feng shui principles are used, many things are considered: placement, direction, symmetry, balance, elements, numbers, color and shapes, to name a few. In this article, I will share how the first three concepts were used in the building of the city and how you can use them to create an energetic flow and a more powerful environment.

The concept: According to feng shui, where things are placed is important, and having a mountain behind you balances the energy and adds stability and protection, preventing “enemies” from sneaking up from behind.

The Forbidden City: Based on the above principle, an artificial mountain was built at the rear of the city (north), and all the doors of the pavilions were built facing south so that the city had a mountain at its back. The panoramic image of the city was taken from the top of the mountain looking south.

Your environment: Place an image of a mountain behind your desk or above your bed for greater stability and symbolic protection.

The concept: Symmetry brings power. The human body is, for the most part, visually symmetrical. We have two eyes, two arms, two legs, etc., and if we were to draw a line from our head to the ground, the two halves of our body would mirror each other. When we match our environment to our body, we operate in power.

The Forbidden City:The principle buildings and pavilions in the city are aligned and symmetrical along a straight north to south axis, and all the major structures mirror each other. Note the symmetry in both of the images.

Your environment: Whenever you can, create symmetry in rooms or at the very least on some of your shelves. Even if you live alone, put a nightstand on each side of the bed or place matching figurines an equal distance apart on a shelf.

The concept: Balance around you supports balance within you. It is easier to stay centered from a place of balance. When one is centered, fears and doubts are kept at bay and we operate from a place of peace.

The Forbidden City: Every detail in the city was designed with balance in mind. Straight lines were balanced with curvy lines, points with waves, round archways with square doorways, light areas with dark areas, masculine representation (yang) with feminine (yin), etc. The Temple of Heaven is a good example of this.

Your environment: Make sure you have complementary opposites represented in your home. For example, if your sofa is boxy and square, use round throw pillows. If it is round and puffy, use square pillows. If you have a square dining table, select chairs that have a round back. If your bedroom furniture is linear, choose a flowing pattern for your bedspread.

This is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the degree to which feng shui was implemented in the Forbidden City. However, by just paying attention to the three basic feng shui concepts — placement, symmetry and balance — you can easily make a tangible energetic shift and increase the energetic support in your home.

Alice Inoue is the founder and Chief Happiness Officer at Happiness U, a friendly educational establishment at Na Lama Kukui (formerly known as Gentry Pacific Design Center) on Nimitz Highway. You’ll find inspiring classes geared toward personal growth. Visit


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Where Is Mrs Christie? (6E)

Where Is Mrs Christie? (6E)

Agatha Christie was one of the greatest thriller writers of all time and certainly the most prolific. In 1926, she was at the centre of a mystery as perplexing as any of her fiction, a series of events which sparked one of the biggest and most extensive police hunts in history. Her crashed car was discovered in Surrey and the famous author was missing, presumed dead by many, for eleven days. However, she was eventually found at a luxury hotel in Harrogate. She claimed then, and for the rest of the life, that she was suffering from amnesia and remembered nothing. Neither the press nor the police believed her.  Did Agatha Christie lie, and if so why? Was it a publicity stunt? Or was there a darker secret involved?

Actor Liz Grand presents her new one-woman show following her sell-out appearance at the Festival in The Second Best Bed.

Duration: 110