Benpercent

I've become quite disenchanted with the job market, and haven't been doing much, if any, job hunting. I'm being contacted out of the wazoo by insurance companies about becoming a salesperson, a position I'd like to avoid considering (1) the nature of the Michigan market, (2) the fact that it's commission based work, and (3) because I've read that a number of these companies might be scams, like Vector Marketing. I'm pondering as to whether or not I should even be job-hunting considering my upcoming college semester. Even though I may be going only half time, I really need to focus on bringing myself up academically and on continuously improving my learning habits. I worry about how job-hunting interferes with the time I have to do my personal studies (to build up knowledge and prepare for formal academic studies). Worries, worries, worries, and so much to think about.

Thank you Chris, I have taken heed of your suggestions. Well, I went down to my local recruitment agency today and learned that going in person is a total waste of time. After I had signed in and everything I learned that everything was to be done on the internet, just like I could have done at home. A bit frustrating considering the number of miles I had driven, but I can understand: unemployment in Michigan is raging to the point where it's difficult for even recruitment agencies to be able to handle it. When I went to the Michigan Works homepage I saw that there are over seventeen-thousand job opportunities -- but over one million people vying for those opportunities. My priorities have changed. Instead of going to school and getting a job, my priorities are now go to school, get a job, and get the hell out as soon as possible.

I did some significant editing to my resume'; would you guys mind critiquing it again? Remember that one cannot be too harsh or too petty in suggesting improvements; even a misplaced comma is worth raising a ruckus about. What I did was significantly added to my skills and abilities section (retitled Soft Skills & Abilities) and turned it into a bulleted list, added a section explaining employment gaps, added my cellular phone number, added what experience I've obtained from my previous jobs, and changed the font size to 12 in order to make sure the information fills completely two pages (instead of just one and a fifth). However, I am baffled as to what I should put underneath my education sub-section for my college. I am in the process of re enrolling, but for the time being I'm in the middle ground between being recognized as an active student and being recognized as an inactive student. I have yet to receive my approval notice, and I don't know how long it will take. .rtf

Oh believe me I am considering and planning on it! But I don't think that would be feasible as of right now. In order for me to do that I would have to have a job set up that would pay well enough so that I could pay for my own apartment, food, utilities, and transportation, but getting a job in the first place is what the problem is. Besides, I would like to finish a semester or two back here at the college I am currently re enrolling in so that I can prove my academic worth and make myself more eligible for financial aid. Perhaps if all goes well I will be able to transfer. I used to love Michigan, but if it insists on going to hell I don't want to be along for the ride. (Well, come to think of it I AM already along for the ride. In that case I hope to get off the bus soon.) From what little I know about newspapers in my state, the newspaper companies are actually nearing failure. The paper my grandmother receives has cut back to delivering only Thursday, Friday, and Sunday editions. Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, said that he was afraid of taking vacations from his strip since people might find that they did not miss his comic in its absence and then cease reading it. I believe such may come true with my local newspaper, as people are surely finding substitutes for their Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays that may prove that they don't miss their paper after all.

Update: While this certainly doesn't end my need to think and act in this particular little issue, I would like to let you guys know that I have visited my counselor today and have decided to re enroll at my old college. I'm going to go with the plan I outlined above: I'll do only half-credit hours (half of a semester basically) so that I may have time to adjust and better my habits, and so that I may also be able to demonstrate to my college officials how good of a student I am. The reason why I am deciding to go back to college goes back to some other thinking I did on what conditions people should go to college on in the first place. People should only go under three conditions: (1) Having a college degree is necessary for one's goal pursuits (e.g. doctor or lawyer), (2) having a college degree is extremely helpful in one's goal pursuits (some jobs that don't require college degrees may nonetheless be easier to obtain with a college degree), and (3) one values institutionalized education, or requires institutionalized education due to one's learning style (say you need people to discuss concepts with in order to understand them fully). I honestly don't know what purpose I want to dedicate my life to, but I do know that intelligence will be an element in it, so that means that criterion number two applies to me. This time will be much difference given that there isn't a mind-body split this time around. I do, however, need to do more thinking as to how to tackle my monetary concerns in the meanwhile, but it isn't so dire now given that I can afford a semester with my savings and that I am a dependent for food and shelter. Again, thank you for all the responses. I must say I love coming to this forum for advice. P.S. I don't post on this forum as much as I used to as you may have noticed, so I ask: When did this new way of presenting forum posts come about? (Referring to "Posts in this topic" section under the limited posts available for viewing.)

To clarify a misconception: I no longer have, for the most part, a speech impediment. If you look back at the speech thread I have linked to you will see that I have actually concluded it by stating that my self-improvement venture in that area was successful. My original problem was that I couldn't properly distinguish between the /s/ and /th/ (voiced and unvoiced) sounds in my speech (e.g. I would say "bass" instead of "bath" or "thick" instead of "sick"), but now that I have had my error pointed out and been taught how to distinguish the sounds by the placement of my tongue my problem is almost entirely cured. I say only mostly because I do from time to time slip up. Also, my hearing-impairment, at least in regards to how I live my life, is more a thing of quality of sound rather than intensity of volume. In other words, my deafness on the high end of the pitch scale affects how I hear people more so than how loudly I hear them. It is very strange to say this, but I actually hear better without my old analog hearing-aids than I did while wearing them, so I've stopped wearing them altogether. As to how this relates to my employment prospects, I may have particular problems with people who have foreign accents or with people who mumble, but in general I can go about my life just fine as if I were a hearing person. (But turn on those closed-captions!) To be honest I have been considering going back to college, which would be a good thing at this point since my mind would actually be in agreement with my actions (I did some introspecting and identified that I do have some confidence after all), but I still don't know what kind of career I would want to go into. Originally I wanted to be a writer, but I abandoned that goal when upon introspection I discovered it wasn't as big a value in my life as I originally thought it was. I do know, however, that I place a big value on knowledge, good epistemology, philosophy, and the like, and that going to college may in fact help me in my pursuit of knowledge since it might boost my motivation to learn properly and thoroughly (consequences of learning more readily available in form of feedback from teachers); I have, after all, helped arm myself against bad habits and bad epistemology by reading various self-help books such as "Study Methods and Motivation" or the majority of "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" (I'm two sections away from completing it entirely). Would you say that I shouldn't go back to college until I have determined what it is that I want to go into as a career? Here's what I have been thinking in regards to funding: I have enough money to pay for one semester, but what I could do is go half-time (two classes) so that I may readjust myself to the setting (the workload shock contributed to my doing poorly the first time), have enough time to put thorough effort in what little work I have, and have enough time to do my own personal studying. By this I hope to accomplish establishing better habits than I had the first time and to more easily demonstrate to college officials that I'm a serious and good student, because at my alma mater I am on academic probation. My other two funding concerns are that of food (a proper diet is essential for proper brain function, strong memories, and consistent energy levels) and values (life must be worth living in the meanwhile). However, I do believe that to some extent food and value-pursuit can be integrated: cooking and baking is a budding hobby of mine. What do you think? I am entertaining the notion that perhaps going back to college may be the best for improving my job prospects. On top of the fact that my past has hurt my employment prospects, I live in Michigan, and near the economically worst parts of Michigan too! I just went to a job fair at a mall near me, and when I arrived ten minutes earlier than it was scheduled to begin I had found that dozens of people had already lined up. I'll do some thinking in this area, but what do you mean by "softskills"? Hmm...temp agencies? Is that how I would go about looking them up? Hmm! I never thought about the hospital! Now there's a thought! But to be clear, what I said was that I was reclusive, not that I am now. Sure, I am still introverted, but I am well past my childhood stage where I actively avoided social confrontation. I just mentioned that to make clear that I'm still at the starting line in regards to social networking in the business part of my life. I will take note of that book, but some questions: 1.)by what formal concept are recruitment agencies referred to by, and 2.) what does CV stand for? * * * * * Thank you all for your responses. This has done quite a bit already in alleviating my stress.

What do you mean by "hardly care about"? I have never come across such jobs. How would I go about seeking them out? I will certainly think about this, for I think I have been neglecting to give this option serious consideration for some time, but there are still worries. For one thing, I came near to being expelled the first time I went to college: my mind was in such intense disagreement with my being there that I got dangerously depressed and did awful on my school work. Wouldn't that affect my capability to attain a loan, on top of the facts that banks are doing not-so-well and that I live in Michigan? Yeah, I'll confess I'm not exactly confident right now. Another reason why loans have been worrying me is because I have absolutely no idea whatsoever as to how I'll pay them off and I'm worried that the economy is going to be in the dumps for years to come. I never thought it about it in those terms. That's a beneficial statement. I'll also add in this extra detail if it should help: My family members are of little to no help. My mother is unofficially bankrupt after decades of financial irresponsibility and will probably go from the world without a penny to her name, and my grandmother lives on, I think, nothing but social security. Truth be told, I don't think it would be morally right for me to accept help from most of my family members since I do not hold them as values and would therefore be parasitic if I asked for help from them. Again, thank you for your time. I think you have convinced me to visit my old college counselor.

As some of you may be aware from a previous thread of mine, for the time being I have dropped out of college in order to repair the intellectual damage that was done by my prior schooling, and to collect myself financially in order to be able to better afford college. My current plan is to do independent studying to gain missed knowledge and improve my study skills, and to get a job in the meanwhile in order to be able to afford more study resources and to get myself out of debt (student loans). However, I find that I have another huge hurdle other than just repairing my mind: I find it extremely difficult to find a job. Aside from living in Michigan, how I have lived my childhood is now doing great harm in my capability to find employment. I wasn't a bad child while growing up to be clear, but I wasn't exceptional either. Because my educators thought I was mentally inferior to other children (due to my speech impediment resulting from my hearing-impairment) and because my role models were so horrible (example), I grew up reclusive and unwilling to participate in extra curricular activities, and was rather academically undistinguished given I attended either "special" classes or normal run-of-the-mill classes. I have since then healed all spiritual traces of such a lifestyle within my soul and have drastically altered my habits and my way of thinking and learning, but my childhood still has a terrible impact on my employment prospects. Just look at the resume' I have attached below, which I have altered to remove personally-identifying information and have submitted for your critique. So my question is this: What are some courses of action I could/should take in order to improve my employment prospects? Should I do volunteer work and the like, or perhaps something else? Might I be taking the wrong course in life altogether? Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I do appreciate it if you should choose to respond. .rtf

I think I may have made a critical identification last week and a few days ago, which should help me cope from now on if I constantly keep them in mind. While I was mowing the lawn at work I was again frustrating my mind with thoughts as to how hopeless and terrible IP is to deal with, and how much I dislike dealing with him, when I suddenly realized that it was in fact myself who was putting all on this stress on me. I'm taking a problem that's only rather irritating and inflating it beyond what its actual importance is. Also, while at work a different day (like Eric Hoffer, I find work to be helpful to my thinking), I got to thinking about the psycho-epistemology of IP and how horrendously evasive he is. As I said above, he feels such a sense of guilt at the content of my ideas that he virtually, if not absolutely literally, ignores everything I say, puts forth his feeling-based argument, and then calls me stubborn for not accepting his arbitrary emotions as the truth. I realized that since he's so evasive that he's utterly unable to be dealt with rationally, and that my thinking of him is often with the assumption that I'll be able to rationally persuade him somehow. My conclusion was that not only should I try to deal with this person as little as possible, I should try to think about this person as little as possible as well, since this person constitutes that which is insignificant in life and is not deserving of any consideration. I think it follows then that I should, through discipline, focus, and constantly reminding myself what is important in life and the evasive nature of this person; try to exclude this person from my thoughts as much as I can. All the mental stress I have been complaining about I have been putting upon myself. Thank you all, for your input.

And I do indeed have another improvement to make. After some thinking I realized that it would be much more beneficial to try and understand conceptual chains rather than isolated concepts. With isolated concepts there may be the tendency for confusion, since not every concept is a perceptual concept. It may therefore possibly lead to a fruitless exercise if one was to make an entry for a concept only to find out that other concepts were required to understand it. Here is the change to the exercise I propose: Instead of picking out several concepts to look up in isolation, look up one abstract concept and under the section "Height" (in the exercise on your homework sheet) list the various concepts, however many, that are required to ground an understanding of the particular concept. Then do separate entries for all those concepts and keep going until you've hit the level of perceptual reality. To avoid going off into infinity, keep your focus honed in on trying to understand the first concept you started with and skip doing entries for concepts you already understand. Granted, this will indeed make the exercise take a much longer time (or possibly shorter if you should choose a concept not that far from perceptual reality to begin with), but it is work well worth it if conceptual precision is the goal.

I don't think it would help. Many people in my family are IPs, and many are also opposed to me since I refuse to associate/sanction a certain person that they wish for me to associate with/sanction. Ah, I get you now. Not necessarily lying, but rather letting the person go on thinking what they think. I will give it consideration. Hmm...yes, I agree. I am spinning my tires in the air far too much, and really I shouldn't even be worrying about it since I'm very explicit about my views on my Facebook page and etc. The next problem I think applies is my "Benevolent People" Premise. No matter how bad a person seems to be there always seems to be a thought deep down stating that they may still be rational at root and that they still can be reached for the better. Sort of like Dagny Taggart with the mindless politicians. I guess I do not fully understand the Death Premise.

As I stated above, if I do not defend my position then IP takes it as me accepting the truthfulness of his position and will therefore feel free to tell other persons that I advocate his position as well. Also, I fear that if I let him think that I advocate his position he will get more intensely upset in the future when he finds out my true views, as if I had somehow "deceived" him. For example, right now he is under the impression that I am a Christian. This is despite the fact that I have told him on at least two occasions that I have converted to atheism. Given a few months of silent on the issue of religion and he suddenly assumes that I am a Christian again, and asks me, albeit unseriously (he is a lip-service Christian), to pray for people on various occasions. I know that this itself is an unimportant issue as I can easily just allow him to go on thinking that (and that is what I will do); I was just showcasing this as an example. There is also the difficulty of having to deal with the situations where IP outright asks me for my opinion (when, of course, he is really just looking for confirmation for his beliefs). To cite another example, one time we were eating a meal when he asked me, "Boy, this is sure a healthy meal huh?" I looked at the meal from the perspective of my nutritional knowledge and gave him my honest assessment nonchalantly: No, it isn't a healthy meal. He immediately got angry and threw a small bit of a tantrum. These are, of course, all petty issues. The problem is that IP's mindlessness makes him rather unpredictable. He is very often unable to distinguish between my joking and my saying something serious, or will get upset at the pettiest issues. The dinner example above cites the point. I did not intend to be offensive or to stir the pot when I gave my response: I just thought I would give my answer and dinner would continue. Instead a guilt trip. No, IP is not my father. I do not want to get too specific for fear of someone recognizing the caricature, but I will go so far as to say we share living space. I do know ideally that the proper course of action to take is to not deal with this person, but the problem right now is that I do not have the financial means to be able to do so, so I must deal with him for the time being. I do not wish to deal with him, but I have to for right now. (A repeat in case you skipped to this quote.) I have to deal with IP because we share living space and I currently do not have the financial means to move elsewhere. I thought about lying too, but at first glance I would say that would be immoral and outside my self-interest. I'm a terrible liar as of far, and would not be able to put much effort into constructing and maintaining a lie. Plus, if IP found out I were lying about something then he would get upset and cause more strife.

(I am not sure how strict of meaning of "relationship" the moderators adhere to, but I assume that it also subsumes non-romantic relationships. If not, please relocate as necessary.) [Note: IP= IrrationalPerson. I do not want to explain my relationship with this person, so I will be using this to refer to them, along with gender-neutral pronouns.] To put it simply, I have an irrational person as an associate in my life. I know that the proper course of action to take is to not deal with any such persons at all, for irrational people are literally impossible to deal with rationally, but the difficulty on my part is that I must deal with this person for the time being. To not associate may be an option in the future, but not for now. What bothers me is that this person's presence has a negative impact on my sense of life; not so much so as to depress or sadden, but enough so to be a consistent irritation or annoyance in increasing degrees as time goes on. His moral vice is that he is virtually mindless. For example, when confronted with an issue that we have differing viewpoints on, I usually take it upon myself to advocate my position through a structured argument. The problem, however, is that IP is an emotionalist and will ignore (so much so as to *go deaf* to) anything that runs contrary to his views or will employ the use of blatant logical fallacies (e.g. appeal to popularity, appeal to authority, argument from intimidation, etc.), even after having had his errors pointed out multiple times. Sometimes when I ask him how he knows the validity of his position he will straightened his lips into a line and give the shoulder shrug that denotes "I don't know" or insist that it is axiomatic. He insists on holding onto his views even though he explicitly confesses he has no idea how they're true. If I do not explicitly advocate my position, he will automatically assume that I am in agreement with him, which often leads to him spreading disinformation to other people about my views. This attribute adds a sizable amount of stress in the area of life decisions I make. For instance, for the present time I am out of college, for, based on my judgment, I do not think I can afford the expense and that it would be within my self-interest to establish savings beforehand so that I will have more certainty as to whether or not I will be able to pay the expense (combined with economic uncertainty, I am edgy about loans since I do not know as to whether or not I would be able to pay them back.). In the meanwhile, I am conducting my own personal studies (I wrote about it here) so that when I go back I will not only be able to merely afford the college experience, but will be also able to go in with better study habits and a broader learning style. When I try to justify my position to IP, however, I get a never-ending stream of frustration. He thinks that I ought to go into college immediately and that I'm ruining my life otherwise. We run into again all the frustrations we have in any "constructive" argument, and it always ends with both of us being flustered that neither one was persuaded from his position. IP obviously assumes that I am an emotionalist as well, and so as a result is trying to persuade me that my "misguided emotions" are wrong and that his emotions are right. I cannot avoid this issue with him because he is truly concerned as to whether or not I am ruining my life, and so combined with his emotionalist nature and irrationality it leads to him bringing up the topic for too many a fruitless conversation. I have resorted to saying, "This is not up for disscussion," but I doubt that it will hold him off. Another big problem is that IP is the most consistent Peter Keating I have ever met. If I express my opinion something (say, on food), he will often deprive himself of a value in order to try and please me, and then will throw a small tantrum of the sorts, blaming me for the sacrifice of his value. In the past he would be over-critical and rude in expressing his views about my clothing because he was worried about what other people would think if I were seen wearing some particular shirt in his company. He becomes extremely anxious whenever he notices someone looking at him in public, and will lower his voice to a whisper and hide his face since he's worried that the onlooker is passing a negative judgment. So here is the kind of advice I am requesting: Given an irrational person in one's life that one *must* deal with for the present time, how should one go about dealing with this person and preventing a negative impact on one's sense of life or one's productivity? As of right now I am trying to limit my contact with this person to the bare minimum I possibly can (I even offer to drive if we should travel somewhere, so that I can ensure the speed is at the speed limit at all times), but I find this to be insufficient action, as IP gets irritated at my avoidance of him. I must deal with him, and so therefore my very frustrating confrontations with him are inevitable. So, might you be able to assist me? I do appreciate you taking the time to read this, and offer thanks in advance if you should comment.

While at work today I noticed just how much interest I have lost in old activities of mine since they have been replaced by other values. In particular, posting here on ObjectivismOnline.net. While I am not asserting that I plan on "officially" ceasing to post on here, I think it is inevitable that I will simply lose interest, quit posting, and move onto other intellectual interests. Before I advance to that stage I think I do owe the posters of this thread one last update. As of far I have...well...perhaps I should end this appropriately!: Conclusion.mp3 Forgive me if it sounds like I'm attempting to sound like Vincent Price; I am not alone in the household and, for some reason, I got the same anxiety as if I were going to make a public speech. With practice shall my nervousness go away. To add a post-script to the recording, the username I had forgotten was EC (sorry!) and the organization I couldn't recall at the time was Toastmasters. As for those specialized hearing-aids, I have much more pressing financial concerns and a need for value pursuit, so I will be having to shelve that goal for a while. For how long I do not know, but once I can comfortably afford them I will get them. It is strange: when I was a kid I held the collectivist premise that certain biological attributes constituted one's identity and so I was "proud" of my hearing impairment and would not entertain the idea of getting it repaired, but now I think otherwise. I do wish my hearing was full, so that I could understand electronic media better, especially music. Again, great gratitude to everyone who has posted in this thread. I have achieved one goal and now should set sight on another, and with that I consider this thread completed.

And I do indeed have an improvement to make. I realized that a concept can mean different things or subsume different existents depending on what sense is being used, so it is merely a waste of time to copy down all the senses and sub-senses, and it makes it the concept much more confusing, harder to retrace to the perceptual level, and more difficult to retain (given my system). What I suggest then is to keep track of the source(s) you got your vocabulary words from (book titles and pages numbers and the like) when you write them down, so that you can only refer back to it if you don't know what context the word was used it, and then copy down *only* the relevant senses. Saves time and makes the learning process easier.

Thanks for the responses all. I understand now: Since altruism asserts that man is not a being in his own right, then it certainly would follow that nothing is violated in the process of using physical force, physical force being inevitable since altruism is impracticable.

I've been playing with my free Lumosity trial for five days now and I must say that I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I just got employed, so I may consider subscribing for a bit. Anyhow, Lumosity gave me an idea. If you go the site, you'll see that they break down your brain skills into several different attributes: (thinking/calculation) speed, attention, memory, flexibility (how quickly/well you adjust to switching tasks), and problem solving. I propose on specializing this thread even further by asking if anyone can come up with any exercises that trains these specific attributes in isolation or combination. Do you mean formal (symbolic) logic?

I am been getting a light grasp on this, but since I can never remember whether Ayn Rand or someone from the Objective Standard said it, I lose my grip on the thought. Simply, what is the philosophical (modern or ancient) justification for enforcing altruism in politics*? Whose, or what, philosophical system gave the argument that it is right to use law to make people follow altruism? I know that altruism is entirely impracticable, so following the system inevitably leads to making others follow the ethics, sacrificing instead of being sacrificed. Only I don't understand where the proponents are coming from. *To cite an example: using tax money, which is stolen money, to fund the enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, which is an altruistic proposal to increase home ownership among the "needy".

This did not occur to me until I had recalled this sentence, but I actually do have a conceptual activity of the sorts, only I never considered it until now to be a mind exercise. It's an epistemological exercise to be exact. What I do, on the first day, is select five words (concepts) that are completely foreign to my understanding or I am confused about, and then write them down in a list (the majority of the time I just pick words according to what I come across in my reading). Then I, on a separate sheet of paper: Copy down the definition of the word from the dictionary word-for-word, with minor shortcuts such as cutting out phonetic spellings or not copying down the word origin. Make a note of how high the concept is, that is, whether it can be directly perceived, understood after having integrated other concepts, and so on. Make a note of what it denotes exactly, i.e., what it referent is. For example, if I were writing about the concept "angry", I would write "Denotes: An automatic response stemming from a evaluation of a situation/action/existent." Record any thoughts I have about the concept. I put anything here, whether it be about whether the dictionary's definition is properly delimited or valid, or parts I'm confused about. Finally, I write a sentence applying the concept. On the second day, I reread the list for ten or fifteen minutes to reinforce it into my memory. It has clarified and expanded my vocabulary, but, I must admit, I am not sure if my particular system is the best that it can be, considering I am still fresh into my epistemology studies, so I welcome and encourage suggestions for improvements.

Is Aikido a martial art? I haven't a proper financial standing to be able to consider paid lessons, so might there be a free resource to refer to? Would a specialized workout be a sufficient substitute? Thank you, I'll set it on my to-do list to check out. Yes, it happens to me every time I do it. Most probably it is just the strain of concentration, but I see it as the greatest opportunity for improvement because we are pushing our limits outward by actually reaching our limits. There is no time limit. I have merely chosen fifteen-minutes per section (kept track of by an egg timer) so that I may easily fit it into a daily schedule without worrying about the risk of burning myself out with monotony.

Recently I have been observing what great benefits mental exercise each day can bring for one's mind. While I did not intend to pursue such ends, I have achieved as a result from such exercises (which I will explain below) the ability to concentrate better, think in a more focused manner and for longer periods, process things more efficiently, and to more easily adapt to a studious mindset during my personal studies, all from just a half-hour of arithmetic problems a day. One may do the exercises for only one purpose, but many fruits are picked. Given the benefits, I am contemplating now as to what else is available and perhaps is even more rigorous. So I ask: What types of mental exercises (or combination thereof) do you consider beneficial to the maintenance and improvement of one's mind/brain? I will start by using my contribution to explain the exercises mentioned above. On a daily basis, or sometimes every other day, I will practice arithmetic problems with this Java applet for one half-hour, dedicating fifteen minutes to addition and fifteen minutes to subtraction. My personal rule, however, is to prohibit typing out the answer as it is being calculated so as to make things more difficult by forcing myself to work harder to mentally visualize and retain each step. This not only works one's mathematical faculties, but also one's concentration and memory. What I like most about this Java program is how easy it is to keep track of progress, as it lists the number you have have gotten right and the number of failed attempts. In just a matter of days I have seen significant improvement. Having been mathematically lethargic for many years beforehand, at my first attempt (two numbers, two digits each) I was only able to score near fifty on addition and near forty on subtraction within the time limit. A few days of practice and I have managed to get 150+ right on both of them within the time limit, and have now upped the difficulty with more digits. It is impressive to see not only what benefits one can get from mental exercise, but also how fast those benefits can be achieved!

Yes, it is essential due to man's need of art. (To borrow Peikoff's words from OPAR: concepts condense percepts, philosophy condenses concepts, and art condenses philosophy [by bringing it back to the perceptual level in the form of a concrete]). If a systematical philosophy is to work as a guide to living, a person needs "concrete abstractions" (you could say) to help him choose his actions, lest he become rationalistic. I too thought I could go without reading Rand's fiction, but after reading it I find the abstractions of Objectivism to be much more understandable and easier to retain in my head for reference.

The title is misleading because it states that Yahoo itself is advocating Obama as the #1 failure whereas your first post states that Obama is the #1 result for the search term "miserable failure". The difference is that of what a company's opinion is and what people happen to be looking up.

Looks like I'll be opening up a mattress fund tomorrow! This probably explains why my credit union was full to the brim (and then some) with parking today at lunchtime. I called to ask what had happened, but nobody answered nor did I receive the promised callback.

There is also an event there titled "Edison Hour" which advocates the exact same methods of protest.