Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

  I've been a proponent of goal-setting for a long time. At least 20 years ago, I read the late Zig Ziglar's work on goals, and I intuitively knew that he got it right. So I've been using his basic goal - setting strategy for a long time.  Up until now, what with technology, the only thing missing from the equation was some sort of app specifically designed to track it all, provide reminders, and so on. And I think I've found it. I don't normally endorse products or services, but in this case I make an exception. The app is called "Lifetick" and it works on the web or in your iOS or Android phone: Lifetick has features that closely mirror Zig Ziglar's system, making it a snap for me to decide to use it. I'm not talking about New Year's resolutions here, I don't make any because I have a goal system that works daily and is in almost constant revision. You have Core Values that represent areas of your life, then individual Goals wi...

A level of propaganda I don’t recognize, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. 2014 has been the year of utter nonsense. It just finished in fine form with a 5% US GDP growth number, just to name one example. Really, guys? 5%? Really? With all the numbers presented lately, the negative Thanksgiving sales data – minus 11% -, the so-so at best Christmas store numbers to date, shrinking durable goods in November and all? Plus 5%? The FBI says that it was North Korea that did the Sony hack. Propaganda. Pull apart all the stuff the FBI has been saying - it doesn't compute. Same with the ridiculous 97 percent "consensus" on global warming. Horseshit! 31,000 scientists signed the Oregon Petition stating they don't believe that manmade greenhouse gases are making the earth heat up. The satellite data shows that there hasn't been any warming in over 17 years. But hey - consensus, right? It really doesn’t matter what I say, does it? You have enough people believ...

Upon returning from Israel where I lived and worked on Kibbutz Na'an, I chose to spend several weeks in France, both in Paris and surrounding smaller cities including the countryside in Bordeaux. What I found is that once one gets out of Paris, where Parisians are not particularly fond of Americans, the people are extremely friendly and appreciative of Americans. My aunt Ruth is French, and so my cousins all were exposed to the language at an early age. I grew into French peripherally, and speak enough to get along. There are ten major wine growing regions in France, plus a number of smaller areas. There is commercial wine production in every region of France, except for the five regions bordering on France's north coast. The appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC), which translates as "controlled designation of origin", is the French certification granted to certain French geographical indications for wines, cheeses, butters, and other agricultural products, all...

Fact 1: The racial percentage of those killed by police hasn't changed. In other words, police are not more (or less) likely to shoot and kill blacks than they were 15 years ago. (In more academic terms, there is no correlation between year and race, from 1998 to 2012, selecting for whites and blacks). Fact 2: Blacks are more likely than whites to be shot and killed by police, but probably less so than you'd suspect. 34 percent of those killed by police are African American. But put another way, 62 percent of those killed by police are white. Fact 3: UCR data on justified police-homicides are notorious incomplete. These numbers are an undercount. But given the data we have, as reported (or not) to the DOJ by local police departments, police kill at least one person a day (426 in 2012, to be exact, 30 percent were black, 63 percent were white). In 2012, police killed a total of 426 people. Of those: white men: 267 black men: 128 white women: 6 black women: 4 "Asia...

Honesty refers to a facet of moral character and connotes positive and virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness, including straightforwardness of conduct, along with the absence of lying, cheating, theft, etc. Furthermore, honesty means being trustworthy, loyal, fair, and sincere. Most of us want an honest relationship with our mate, or potential mate. People have a need for honesty and openness -- it gives them a sense of security and helps them become emotionally bonded to the one who meets that need. Those with a need for honesty and openness want accurate information about their partner's thoughts, feelings, habits, likes, dislikes, personal history, daily activities and plans for the future. If your partner does not provide honest and open communication, trust is undermined and the feelings of security can eventually be destroyed. We cannot trust the signals that are being sent and feel we have no foundation on which to build a solid...

People on social media are usually pretty quick to jump on the "latest new thing", often without doing any real research. That's why when invited to join "tsu", I declined. Now I feel even more strongly about my decision. Mark Traphagen has an excellent review here   http://goo.gl/SIYzT8 His main points: "If Tsu succeeds in attracting a large number of users, the pie slices of daily royalties will get ever smaller. That may discourage people who are there in hopes of making real money, and they may give up producing new content. Paying in proportion to views means users will likely learn quickly to produce the kind of "lowest common denominator," mindless-but-fun content that sites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy churn out like machines. It's a lot harder to attract views with more thoughtful content. Therefore I predict Tsu will quickly become what many consider the bottom feed of Facebook: silly cat memes, vapid quote graphics, and videos of...

Traveling, especially if you have to do it for work, sucks bigtime. For years, I traveled all over Europe and the US, to a Microsoft MVP summit each year, not to mention at least one or two other developer events, either as a guest or as a speaker. The sign reads “Welcome to Chicago.” There’s nothing welcoming about anything though. You’re surrounded by a swarm of cranky people who were just cramped up on a long flight. They’re late for meetings or connecting flights. They’re hungry, thirsty and tired. They probably need to use the restroom, too. The airport I’m talking about is Ohare, but it could very well be any major airport. And the last time I experienced any of that was over 2 years ago now. That was the last big trip I took. Thank god. Over the years, I’ve been to over 15 countries and had some great times as well as some low times. I had a lot of places I wanted to visit. But I don’t care about it anymore; I’ve decided traveling sucks. Here is why: 1. People try t...

  The problem that many people arguing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have is that they have no idea who is who, and what are the historical forces behind the conflict. Most people outside of the middle east think the violence in Gaza is a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But history shows us something different: At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the division of land to be agreed was that the Jews would receive Palestine from the Mediterranean Sea and including what is today Jordan, and the Arabs would receive the Arab Peninsular and what is today Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.  This, in effect, converted the Balfour Declaration into a binding legal document. It was no longer the whim of a British Government with no rights but now incorporated into international law by the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers. The Jewish people have the legal right to live and remain in every part of the territory which was part of the Mandated territory of Pales...

In lay terms limerence is romantic love, crazy love, lovesick, mad love, amour fort. You see a theme in the words crazy, sick, and mad. In this condition, one's body drugs itself mightily with hormones that create a feeling of joy. The rapture is balanced with the panic and dread that it could end. And it will. Limerence has a shelf life. By most estimates, you're lucky to get 12 months.  Dorothy Tennov, PhD, author of the groundbreaking 1979 book Love and Limerence, is the woman who originated the term.  Popular culture has done us a great disservice in our understanding of romantic love. From a young age, we watch movies and read books that form the scripts of our adult relationships. But popular culture usually gets it wrong, often in the name of entertainment, and ends up confusing love with limerence, which is precisely what most of us do. Limerence has been described as "an involuntary interpersonal state that involves an acute longing for emotional reciprocation, ...

Post by Faisalbabu Vellur .

The widely publicized debate between "science" (Bill Nye) and "religion" (Ken Ham) led me to make sure I understand my terms. I have no issue understanding the scientific basis for evolution; there is an extensive fossil record. But the "religion" side may be a bit murkier. You really have Creationism vs Intelligent Design here. Creationism comes in different varieties, from the strictest biblical literalism, which says the Earth is only a few thousand years old, to the theistic evolutionism of the Catholic Church, which accepts evidence that the Earth is millions of years old, and that evolution can explain much of its history—but not the creation of the human soul. Between those, there are the "Young-Earth" and the "Old-Earth" creationists, who differ over the age of the planet and the details of how God created life. The limited scope of Intelligent Design theory actually makes it compatible with a wide range of views. Some ID t...

1) Only 1 Percent Of The U.S. Labor Force Earns The Minimum Wage 2) Teenagers Comprise The Single Largest Age Group Of Minimum Wage Workers 3) Most Minimum Wage Workers Are Under The Age Of 25 4) A Majority Of Those Who Earn The Minimum Wage Work In Food Preparation Or Sales 5) Less Than 5 Percent Of People Who Earn The Minimum Wage Work In Construction Or Manufacturing 6) A Majority Of Them Also Worked Less Than 30 Hours Per Week 7) Less Than One-Third Worked Full-Time 8) A Full-Time Minimum Wage Worker In 2014 Will Make 24 Percent More Than The Federal Poverty Limit 9) One-Third Of Minimum Wage Workers Either Dropped Out Of Or Never Attended High School 10) There Are Nearly Six Times More Minimum Wage Workers Today Than In 2007 11) A Change In The Minimum Wage Often Triggers Union Wage Hikes And Benefit Renegotiations In truth, there is only one way to regard a minimum wage law: it is compulsory unemployment. The law says: it is illegal, and therefore criminal, for anyone...

The best way to get over a failed relationship is to be completely honest with yourself.  The worst thing you can do is spend time imagining how things “could have been” or what “might have happened.”  The relationship failed, and that’s all there is to it. Maybe it failed because your partner wasn’t faithful, maybe your personalities just didn't "click", or maybe you both got bored with each other.  There are plenty of reasons why relationships fail. The first thing to do is give your old relationship the funeral it deserves.  This goes for a lot of things in life outside of relationships.  You have to move past the hurt feelings and the disappointment.  The better your relationship was, the worse this process may be. A lot of it also depends on how long the relationship lasted. The old adage of "well, we can just be friends"  is very difficult to make work; it's better to just make a clean break and forget everything - the sooner, the better...

When you're a divorced full-time programmer who has an autistic son living at home, you really don't have a lot of time for the dating scene. I never liked it anyway, so "no great loss", as far as I'm concerned.  In my case, I've been divorced more than 10 years and in the last year or so I've come to the realization that I'd really like to find love again and have a life - partner who wants to share the rest of her life with me. But what is left, if you are seriously "looking for love" again?  Well,there is social media (Facebook or Google+ - Twitter is out of the question) Of the two, I prefer Google+ because it gives you all the tools to meet someone in the virtual world, have private conversations, and even video hangouts. Facebook seems to have too many "fake profiles" and scams. The other alternative is dating sites such as OK Cupid or Plenty Of Fish (POF). I tried Match.com but it didn't seem to offer much more than the...

"My name is Peter, and I'm a social media addict" Have you ever run into a friend on Facebook or Google+ who posts that they "need to take a break from social media"? That their faith in humanity has hit a new low? Or that they are seeing too much intolerance, trolling, etc.? Social media has made many aspects of relationships more accessible: Viewing posts from friends scattered around the world can make you feel more connected to them, while the ubiquity of social media can often make it easier to get in touch with someone than more traditional, “offline” means. But social media also helps fuel feelings of isolation and self-doubt. A 2012 study published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, for example, found that the longer people spent on Facebook each week, the more they agreed that everyone else was happier and had better lives. For some, that self-doubt can be countered in the same place it originates: through affirmin...

A friend posted somebody's link to a short movie about gratitude and happiness, and I instantly got the "connection" because it parallels many of the things that have been going on in my life right now. It turns out, giving thanks is good for your health. A growing body of research suggests that maintaining an attitude of gratitude can improve psychological, emotional and physical well-being. Adults who frequently feel grateful have more energy, more optimism, more social connections and more happiness than those who do not, according to studies conducted over the past decade. They're also less likely to be depressed, envious, greedy or alcoholics. They earn more money, sleep more soundly, exercise more regularly and have greater resistance to viral infections. For older children and adults, one simple way to cultivate gratitude is to literally count your blessings. Keep a journal and regularly record whatever you are grateful for that day. Be specifi...

The Danish health care system is the nightmare of any anti-government free market believer: it's a tax-funded state-run universal health care system. Denmark provides "free" health care to all residents, funded through taxes. According to OECD's Health Data, the Danish health care system delivers healthcare at roughly half the cost that Americans pay. Danish health care covers everybody - 100 percent of the population-while in the U.S. fewer than 80 percent of citizens are covered, and often only partially. But the real question is: what makes Danish health care so cheap? It's not because it's of poorer quality. According to international surveys, more than 90 percent of Danes are totally satisfied with their health care, and it uses the most advanced methods available anywhere. And per capita there are more hospital beds and doctors than in the U.S. It's mainly cheap because it's a lot simpler to manage. There are no medical insurance companies ...

In my travels through social media over the past several years, especially on Google+, I've come across a phenomenon that I've come to affectionately refer to as "MINO" - Marriage In Name Only. For whatever reason, women whom I've met on social media  have a tendency to be willing to confide in me - probably  at least in part because I actually happen to be a trustworthy person, and never, ever disclose private information that I am entrusted with to third parties. And so I end up finding out about their relationships. I wouldn't say there's a "typical" MINO; they're all a little different. One woman, a religious Baptist, confided that she hasn't been sexually attracted to her husband for over 20 years, even though she claimed that she "loves him". That's a MINO. Another woman who has a disabled child still lives with her husband but she really no longer loves him and the marriage is more or less "kaput". A...