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  Scrums are the most dangerous phase in rugby, since a collapse or improper engage can lead to a front row player damaging or even breaking his neck. — Wikipedia When I was growing up, cholesterol used to be bad for you. It was easy to remember. Fat, bad. Cholesterol bad. Salt, bad. Everything, bad. Nowadays, though, they differentiate between "good" cholesterol and "bad" cholesterol, as if we're supposed to be able to distinguish them somehow. And it was weird when they switched it up on us, because it was as if the FDA had suddenly issued a press release announcing that there are, in fact, two kinds of rat poison: Good Rat Poison and Bad Rat Poison, and you should eat a lot of the Good kind, and none of the Bad kind, and definitely not mix them up or anything. Up until maybe a year ago, I had a pretty one-dimensional view of so-called "Agile" programming, namely that it's an idiotic fad-diet of a marketing scam making the rounds as yet another technological virus implanting itself in naive programmers who've never read "No Silver Bullet", the kinds of programmers who buy extended warranties and self-help books and believe their bosses genuinely care about them as people, the kinds of programmers who attend conferences to make friends and who don't know how to avoid eye contact with leaflet-waving fanatics in airports and who believe writing shit on index cards will suddenly make software development easier. You know. Chumps. That's the word I'm looking for. My bad-cholesterol view was that Agile Methodologies are for chumps. But I've had a lot of opportunity to observe various flavors of Agile-ism in action lately, and I now think I was only about 90% right. It turns out there's a good kind of Agile, although it's taken me a long time to be able to see it clearly amidst all the hype and kowtowing and moaning feverishly about scrums and whatnot. I have a pretty clear picture of it now. And you can attend my seminar on it for the low, low price of $499.95! Hahaha, chump! No, just kidding. You'll only find seminars about the Bad kind of Agile. And if in the future you ever find me touring around as an Agile Consultant, charging audiences to hear my deep wisdom and insight about Agile Development, you have my permission to cut my balls off. If I say I was just kidding, say I told you I'd say that. If I then say I'm Tyler Durden and I order you not to cut my balls off , say I definitely said I was going to say that , and then you cut 'em right off. I'll just go right ahead and tell you about the Good Kind, free of charge. It's kinda hard to talk about Good Agile and Bad Agile in isolation, so I might talk about them together. But I'll be sure to label the Good kind with a happy rat, and the Bad kind with a sad dead rat, so you'll always know the difference. The Bad Heading Back in Ye Olden Dayes, most companies approached software development as follows: - hire a bunch of engineers, then hire more. - dream up a project. - set a date for when they want it launched. - put some engineers on it. - whip them until they're either dead or it's launched. or both. - throw a cheap-ass pathetic little party, maybe. This step is optional. - then start over. Thank goodness that doesn't happen at your company, eh now? Whew! Interestingly, this is also exactly how non-technical companies (like, say, Chrysler) handled software development. Except they didn't hire the engineers. Instead, they contracted with software consultants, and they'd hand the consultants 2-year project specs, and demanded the consultants finish everything on time plus all the crap the customer threw in and/or changed after signing the contract. And then it'd all fall apart and the contractors wouldn't get paid, and everyone was really miffed. So some of the consultants began to think: "Hey, if these companies insist on acting like infants, then we should treat them like infants!" And so they did. When a company said "we want features A through Z", the consultants would get these big index cards and write "A" on the first one, "B" on the second one, etc., along with time estimates, and then post them on their wall. Then when the customer wanted to add something, the consultant could point at the wall and say: "OK, boy . Which one of these cards do you want to replace , BOY? " Is it any wonder Chrysler canceled the project? So the consultants, now having lost their primary customer, were at a bar one day, and one of them (named L. Ron Hubbard) said: "This nickel-a-line-of-code gig is lame. You know where the real money is at? You start your own religion." And that's how both Extreme Programming and Scientology were born. Well, people pretty quickly demonstrated that XP was a load of crap. Take Pair Programming, for instance. It's one of the more spectacular failures of XP. None of the Agileytes likes to talk about it much, but let's face it: nobody does it. The rationale was something like: "well if ONE programmer sitting at a terminal is good, then TEN must be better, because MORE is ALWAYS better! But most terminals can only comfortably fit TWO programmers, so we'll call it PAIR programming!" You have to cut them a little slack; they'd been dealing with the corporate equivalent of pre-schoolers for years, and that really messes with a person. But the thing is, viruses are really hard to kill, especially the meme kind. After everyone had gotten all worked up about this whole Agile thing (and sure, everyone wants to be more productive), there was a lot of face to be lost by admitting failure. So some other kinds of Agile "Methodologies" sprang up, and they all claimed that even though all the other ones were busted, their method worked! I mean, go look at some of their sites. Tell me that's not an infomercial. C'mon, just try. It's embarrassing even to look at the thing. Yeah. Well, they make money hand over fist, because of P.T. Barnum's Law, just like Scientology does. Can't really fault 'em. Some people are just dying to be parted with their cash. And their dignity. The rest of us have all known that Agile Methodologies are stupid, by application of any of the following well-known laws of marketing: - anything that calls itself a "Methodology" is stupid, on general principle. - anything that requires "evangelists" and offers seminars, exists soley for the purpose of making money. - anything that never mentions any competition or alternatives is dubiously self-serving. - anything that does diagrams with hand-wavy math is stupid, on general principle. And by "stupid", I mean it's "incredibly brilliant marketing targeted at stupid people." In any case, the consultants kept going with their road shows and glossy pamphlets. Initially, I'm sure they went after corporations; they were looking to sign flexible contracts that allowed them to deliver "whatever" in "2 weeks" on a recurring basis until the client went bankrupt. But I'm equally sure they couldn't find many clients dumb enough to sign such a contract. That's when the consultants decided to take their road show to YOU. Why not take it inside the companies and sell it there, to the developers? There are plenty of companies who use the whip-cycle of development I outlined above, so presumably some of the middle managers and tech leads would be amenable to hearing about how there's this low-cost way out of their hellish existence. And that, friends, was exactly, precisely the point at which they went from "harmless buffoons" to "potentially dangerous", because before they were just bilking fat companies too stupid to develop their own software, but now the manager down the hall from me might get infected. And most places don't have a very good quarantine mechanism for this rather awkward situation: i.e., an otherwise smart manager has become "ill", and is waving XP books and index cards and spouting stuff about how much more productive his team is on account of all this newfound extra bureaucracy. How do we know it's not more productive? Well, it's a slippery problem. Observe that it must be a slippery problem, or it all would have been debunked fair and square by now. But it's exceptionally difficult to measure software developer productivity, for all sorts of famous reasons. And it's even harder to perform anything resembling a valid scientific experiment in software development. You can't have the same team do the same project twice; a bunch of stuff changes the second time around. You can't have 2 teams do the same project; it's too hard to control all the variables, and it's prohibitively expensive to try it in any case. The same team doing 2 different projects in a row isn't an experiment either. About the best you can do is gather statistical data across a lot of teams doing a lot of projects, and try to identify similarities, and perform some regressions, and hope you find some meaningful correlations. But where does the data come from? Companies aren't going to give you their internal data, if they even keep that kind of thing around. Most don't; they cover up their schedule failures and they move on, ever optimistic. Well if you can't do experiments and you can't do proofs, there isn't much science going on. That's why it's a slippery problem. It's why fad diets are still enormously popular. People want fad diets to work, oh boy you bet they do, even I want them to work. And you can point to all these statistically meaningless anecdotes about how Joe lost 35 pounds on this one diet, and all those people who desperately want to be thinner will think "hey, it can't hurt. I'll give it a try." That is exactly what I hear people say, every time a team talks themselves into trying an Agile Methodology. It's not a coincidence. But writing about Bad Agile alone is almost guaranteed to be ineffective. I mean, you can write about how lame Scientology is, or how lame fad diets are, but it's not clear that you're changing anyone's mind. Quitting a viral meme is harder than quitting smoking. I've done both. In order to have the right impact, you have to offer an alternative, and I didn't have one before, not one that I could articulate clearly. One of the (many) problems with Bad Agile is that they condescendingly lump all non-Agile development practices together into two buckets: Waterfall and Cowboy. Waterfall is known to be bad; I hope we can just take that as an axiom today. But what about so-called Cowboy programming, which the Agileers define as "each member of the team does what he or she thinks is best"? Is it true that this is the only other development process? And is Cowboy Programming actually bad? They say it as if it's obviously bad, but they're not super clear on how or why, other than to assert that it's, you know, "chaos". Well, as I mentioned, over the past year I've had the opportunity to watch both Bad Agile and Good Agile in motion, and I've asked the teams and tech leads (using both the Bad and Good forms) lots of questions: how they're doing, how they're feeling, how their process is working. I was really curious, in part because I'd consented to try Agile last Christmas ("hey, it can't hurt"), and wound up arguing with a teammate over exactly what metadata is allowed on index cards before giving up in disgust. Also in part because I had some friends on a team who were getting kind of exhausted from what appeared to be a Death March, and that kind of thing doesn't seem to happen very often at Google. So I dug in, and for a year, I watched and learned. The Good Head (cue happy rat) I'm going to talk a little about Google's software development process. It's not the whole picture, of course, but it should suffice for today. I've been there for almost a year and a half now, and it took a while, but I think I get it now. Mostly. I'm still learning. But I'll share what I've got so far. From a high level, Google's process probably does look like chaos to someone from a more traditional software development company. As a newcomer, some of the things that leap out at you include: - there are managers, sort of, but most of them code at least half-time, making them more like tech leads. - developers can switch teams and/or projects any time they want, no questions asked; just say the word and the movers will show up the next day to put you in your new office with your new team. - Google has a philosophy of not ever telling developers what to work on, and they take it pretty seriously. - developers are strongly encouraged to spend 20% of their time (and I mean their M-F, 8-5 time, not weekends or personal time) working on whatever they want, as long as it's not their main project. - there aren't very many meetings. I'd say an average developer attends perhaps 3 meetings a week, including their 1:1 with their lead. - it's quiet. Engineers are quietly focused on their work, as individuals or sometimes in little groups or 2 to 5. - there aren't Gantt charts or date-task-owner spreadsheets or any other visible project-management artifacts in evidence, not that I've ever seen. - even during the relatively rare crunch periods, people still go get lunch and dinner, which are (famously) always free and tasty, and they don't work insane hours unless they want to. These are generalizations, sure. Old-timers will no doubt have a slightly different view, just as my view of Amazon is slightly biased by having been there in 1998 when it was a pretty crazy place. But I think most Googlers would agree that my generalizations here are pretty accurate. How could this ever work? I get that question a lot. Heck, I asked it myself. What's to stop engineers from leaving all the trouble projects, leaving behind bug-ridden operational nightmares? What keeps engineers working towards the corporate goals if they can work on whatever they want? How do the most important projects get staffed appropriately? How do engineers not get so fat that they routinely get stuck in stairwells and have to be cut out by the Fire Department? I'll answer the latter question briefly, then get to the others. In short: we have this thing called the Noogler Fifteen, named after the Frosh Fifteen: the 15 pounds that many college freshmen put on when they arrive in the land of Stress and Pizza. Google has solved the problem by lubricating the stairwells. As to the rest of your questions, I think most of them have the same small number of answers. First, and arguably most importantly, Google drives behavior through incentives. Engineers working on important projects are, on average, rewarded more than those on less-important projects. You can choose to work on a far-fetched research-y kind of project that may never be practical to anyone, but the work will have to be a reward unto itself. If it turns out you were right and everyone else was wrong (the startup's dream), and your little project turns out to be tremendously impactful, then you'll be rewarded for it. Guaranteed. The rewards and incentives are too numerous to talk about here, but the financial incentives range from gift certificates and massage coupons up through giant bonuses and stock grants, where I won't define "giant" precisely, but think of Google's scale and let your imagination run a bit wild, and you probably won't miss the mark by much. There are other incentives. One is that Google a peer-review oriented culture, and earning the respect of your peers means a lot there. More than it does at other places, I think. This is in part because it's just the way the culture works; it's something that was put in place early on and has managed to become habitual. It's also true because your peers are so damn smart that earning their respect is a huge deal. And it's true because your actual performance review is almost entirely based on your peer reviews, so it has an indirect financial impact on you. Another incentive is that every quarter, without fail, they have a long all-hands in which they show every single project that launched to everyone, and put up the names and faces of the teams (always small) who launched each one, and everyone applauds. Gives me a tingle just to think about it. Google takes launching very seriously, and I think that being recognized for launching something cool might be the strongest incentive across the company. At least it feels that way to me. And there are still other incentives; the list goes on and ON and ON ; the perks are over the top, and the rewards are over the top, and everything there is so comically over the top that you have no choice, as an outsider, but to assume that everything the recruiter is telling you is a baldfaced lie, because there's no possible way a company could be that generous to all of its employees, all of them, I mean even the contractors who clean the micro-kitchens, they get these totally awesome "Google Micro-Kitchen Staff" shirts and fleeces. There is nothing like it on the face of this earth. I could talk for hours , days about how amazing it is to work at Google, and I wouldn't be done. And they're not done either. Every week it seems like there's a new perk, a new benefit, a new improvement, a new survey asking us all if there's any possible way in which life at Google could be better. I might have been mistaken, actually. Having your name and picture up on that big screen at End of Quarter may not be the biggest incentive. The thing that drives the right behavior at Google, more than anything else, more than all the other things combined, is gratitude . You can't help but want to do your absolute best for Google; you feel like you owe it to them for taking such incredibly good care of you. OK, incentives. You've got the idea. Sort of. I mean, you have a sketch of it. When friends who aren't at Google ask me how it is working at Google — and this applies to all my friends at all other companies equally, not just companies I've worked at — I feel just how you'd feel if you'd just gotten out of prison, and your prison buddies, all of whom were sentenced in their early teens, are writing to you and asking you what it's like "on the outside". I mean, what would you tell them? I tell 'em it's not too bad at all. Can't complain. Pretty decent, all in all. Although the incentive-based culture is a huge factor in making things work the way they do, it only addresses how to get engineers to work on the "right" things. It doesn't address how to get those things done efficiently and effectively. So I'll tell you a little about how they approach projects. Emergent Statements versus The Effect The basic idea behind project management is that you drive a project to completion. It's an overt process, a shepherding: by dint of leadership, and organization, and sheer force of will, you cause something to happen that wouldn't otherwise have happened on its own. Project management comes in many flavors, from lightweight to heavyweight, but all flavors share the property that they are external forces acting on an organization. At Google, projects launch because it's the least-energy state for the system. Before I go on, I'll concede that this is a pretty bold claim, and that it's not entirely true. We do have project managers and product managers and people managers and tech leads and so on. But the amount of energy they need to add to the system is far less than what's typically needed in our industry. It's more of an occasional nudge than a full-fledged continuous push. Once in a while, a team needs a bigger nudge, and senior management needs to come in and do the nudging, just like anywhere else. But there's no pushing. Incidentally, Google is a polite company, so there's no yelling, nor wailing and gnashing of teeth, nor escalation and finger-pointing, nor any of the artifacts produced at companies where senior management yells a lot. Hobbes tells us that organizations reflect their leaders; we all know that. The folks up top at Google are polite, hence so is everyone else. Anyway, I claimed that launching projects is the natural state that Google's internal ecosystem tends towards, and it's because they pump so much energy into pointing people in that direction. All your needs are taken care of so that you can focus, and as I've described, there are lots of incentives for focusing on things that Google likes. So launches become an emergent property of the system. This eliminates the need for a bunch of standard project management ideas and methods: all the ones concerned with dealing with slackers, calling bluffs on estimates, forcing people to come to consensus on shared design issues, and so on. You don't need "war team meetings," and you don't need status reports. You don't need them because people are already incented to do the right things and to work together well. The project management techniques that Google does use are more like oil than fuel: things to let the project keep running smoothly, as opposed to things that force the project to move forward. There are plenty of meeting rooms, and there's plenty of open space for people to go chat. Teams are always situated close together in fishbowl-style open seating, so that pair programming happens exactly when it's needed (say 5% of the time), and never otherwise. Google generally recognizes that the middle of the day is prone to interruptions, even at quiet companies, so many engineers are likely to shift their hours and come in very early or stay very late in order to find time to truly concentrate on programming. So meetings only happen in the middle of the day; it's very unusual to see a meeting start before 10am or after 4:30pm. Scheduling meetings outside that band necessarily eats into the time when engineers are actually trying to implement the things they're meeting about, so they don't do it. Google isn't the only place where projects are run this way. Two other kinds of organizations leap to mind when you think of Google's approach: startup companies, and grad schools. Google can be considered a fusion of the startup and grad-school mentalities: on the one hand, it's a hurry-up, let's get something out now, do the simplest thing that could work and we'll grow it later startup-style approach. On the other, it's relatively relaxed and low-key; we have hard problems to solve that nobody else has ever solved, but it's a marathon not a sprint, and focusing requires deep concentration, not frenzied meetings. And at the intersection of the two, startups and grad schools are both fertile innovation ground in which the participants carry a great deal of individual responsibility for the outcome. It's all been done before; the only thing that's really surprising is that Google has managed to make it scale. The scaling is not an accident. Google works really hard on the problem, and they realize that having scaled this far is no guarantee it'll continue, so they're vigilant. That's a good word for it. They're always on the lookout to make sure the way of life and the overall level of productivity continue (or even improve) as they grow. Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. They take things like unit testing, design documents and code reviews more seriously than any other company I've even heard about. They work hard to keep their house in order at all times, and there are strict rules and guidelines in place that prevent engineers and teams from doing things their own way. The result: the whole code base looks the same, so switching teams and sharing code are both far easier than they are at other places. And engineers need great tools, of course, so Google hires great people to build their tools, and they encourage engineers (using incentives) to pitch in on tools work whenever they have an inclination in that direction. The result: Google has great tools, world-class tools, and they just keep getting better. The list goes on. I could talk for days about the amazing rigor behind Google's approach to software engineering. But the main takeaway is that their scaling (both technological and organizational) is not an accident. And once you're up to speed on the Google way of doing things, it all proceeds fairly effortlessly — again, on average, and compared to software development at many other companies. The Tyranny of the Vocabulary We're almost done. The last thing I want to talk about here is dates . Traditional software development can safely be called Date-Oriented Programming, almost without exception. Startup companies have a clock set by their investors and their budget. Big clients set target dates for their consultants. Sales people and product managers set target dates based on their evaluation of market conditions. Engineers set dates based on estimates of previous work that seems similar. All estimation is done through rose-colored glasses, and everyone forgets just how painful it was the last time around. Everyone picks dates out of the air. "This feels like it should take about 3 weeks.""It sure would be nice to have this available for customers by beginning of Q4.""Let's try to have that done by tomorrow." Most of us in our industry are date-driven. There's always a next milestone, always a deadline, always some date-driven goal to it. The only exceptions I can think of to this rule are: 1) Open-source software projects. 2) Grad school projects. 3) Google. Most people take it for granted that you want to pick a date. Even my favorite book on software project management, "The Mythical Man-Month", assumes that you need schedule estimates. If you're in the habit of pre-announcing your software, then the general public usually wants a timeframe, which implies a date. This is, I think, one of the reasons Google tends not to pre-announce. They really do understand that you can't rush good cooking, you can't rush babies out, and you can't rush software development. If the three exceptions I listed above aren't driven by dates, then what drives them? To some extent it's just the creative urge, the desire to produce things; all good engineers have it. (There are many people in our industry who do this gig "for a living", and they go home and don't think about it until the next day. Open source software exists precisely because there are people who are better than that.) But let's be careful: it's not just the creative urge; that's not always directed enough, and it's not always incentive enough. Google is unquestionably driven by time , in the sense that they want things done "as fast as possible". They have many fierce, brilliant competitors, and they have to slake their thirsty investors' need for growth, and each of us has some long-term plans and deliverables we'd like to see come to fruition in our lifetimes. The difference is that Google isn't foolish enough or presumptuous enough to claim to know how long stuff should take. So the only company-wide dates I'm ever aware of are the ends of each quarter, because everyone's scrambling to get on that big launch screen and get the applause and gifts and bonuses and team trips and all the other good that comes of launching things with big impact at Google. Everything in between is just a continuum of days, in which everyone works at optimal productivity, which is different for each person. We all have work-life balance choices to make, and Google is a place where any reasonable choice you make can be accommodated, and can be rewarding. Optimal productivity is also a function of training, and Google offers tons of it, including dozens of tech talks every week by internal and external speakers, all of which are archived permanently so you can view them whenever you like. Google gives you access to any resources you need in order to get your job done, or to learn how to get your job done. And optimal productivity is partly a function of the machine and context in which you're operating: the quality of your code base, your tools, your documentation, your computing platform, your teammates, even the quality of the time you have during the day, which should be food-filled and largely free of interrupts. Then all you need is a work queue. That's it. You want hand-wavy math? I've got it in abundance: software development modeled on queuing theory. Not too far off the mark, though; many folks in our industry have noticed that organizational models are a lot like software models. With nothing more than a work queue (a priority queue, of course), you immediately attain most of the supposedly magical benefits of Agile Methodologies. And make no mistake, it's better to have it in software than on a bunch of index cards. If you're not convinced, then I will steal your index cards. With a priority queue, you have a dumping-ground for any and all ideas (and bugs) that people suggest as the project unfolds. No engineer is ever idle, unless the queue is empty, which by definition means the project has launched. Tasks can be suspended and resumed simply by putting them back in the queue with appropriate notes or documentation. You always know how much work is left, and if you like, you can make time estimates based on the remaining tasks. You can examine closed work items to infer anything from bug regression rates to (if you like) individual productivity. You can see which tasks are often passed over, which can help you discover root causes of pain in the organization. A work queue is completely transparent, so there is minimal risk of accidental duplication of work. And so on. The list goes on, and on, and on. Unfortunately, a work queue doesn't make for a good marketing platform for seminars and conferences. It's not glamorous. It sounds a lot like a pile of work, because that's exactly what it is. Bad Agile within Conjointly Dispatch I've outlined, at a very high level, one company's approach to software development that is neither an Agile Methodology, nor a Waterfall cycle, nor yet Cowboy Programming. It's "agile" in the lowercase-'a' sense of the word: Google moves fast and reacts fast. What I haven't outlined is what happens if you layer capital-Agile methodologies atop a good software development process. You might be tempted to think: "well, it can't hurt!" I even had a brief fling with it myself last year. The short answer is: it hurts. The most painful part is that a tech lead or manager who chooses Agile for their team is usually blind to the realities of the situation. Bad Agile hurts teams in several ways. First, Bad Agile focuses on dates in the worst possible way: short cycles, quick deliverables, frequent estimates and re-estimates. The cycles can be anywhere from a month (which is probably tolerable) down to a day in the worst cases. It's a nicely idealistic view of the world. In the real world, every single participant on a project is, as it turns out, a human being. We have up days and down days. Some days you have so much energy you feel you could code for 18 hours straight. Some days you have a ton of energy, but you just don't feel like focusing on coding. Some days you're just exhausted. Everyone has a biological clock and a a biorhythm that they have very little control over, and it's likely to be phase-shifted from the team clock, if the team clock is ticking in days or half-weeks. Not to mention your personal clock: the events happening outside your work life that occasionally demand your attention during work hours. None of that matters in Bad Agile. If you're feeling up the day after a big deliverable, you're not going to code like crazy; you're going to pace yourself because you need to make sure you have reserve energy for the next big sprint. This impedance mismatch drives great engineers to mediocrity. There's also your extracurricular clock: the set of things you want to accomplish in addition to your main project: often important cleanups or other things that will ultimately improve your whole team's productivity. Bad Agile is exceptionally bad at handling this, and usually winds up reserving large blocks of time after big milestones for everyone to catch up on their side-project time, whether they're feeling creative or not. Bad Agile folks keep their eye on the goal, which hurts innovation. Sure, they'll reserve time for everyone to clean up their own code base, but they're not going to be so altruistic as to help anyone else in the company. How can you, when you're effectively operating in a permanent day-for-day slip? Bad Agile seems for some reason to be embraced by early risers. I think there's some mystical relationship between the personality traits of "wakes up before dawn", "likes static typing but not type inference", "is organized to the point of being anal", "likes team meetings", and "likes Bad Agile". I'm not quite sure what it is, but I see it a lot. Most engineers are not early risers. I know a team that has to come in for an 8:00am meeting at least once (maybe several times) a week. Then they sit like zombies in front of their email until lunch. Then they go home and take a nap. Then they come in at night and work, but they're bleary-eyed and look perpetually exhausted. When I talk to them, they're usually cheery enough, but they usually don't finish their sentences. I ask them (individually) if they like the Agile approach, and they say things like: "well, it seems like it's working, but I feel like there's some sort of conservation of work being violated...", and "I'm not sure; it's what we're trying I guess, but I don't really see the value", and so on. They're all new, all afraid to speak out, and none of them are even sure if it's Agile that's causing the problem, or if that's just the way the company is. That, my friends, is not "agile"; it's a just load of hooey. And it's what you get whenever any manager anywhere decides to be a chump. Good Agile Should Address the Handle I would caution you to be skeptical of two kinds of claims: - "all the good stuff he described is really Agile" - "all the bad stuff he described is the fault of the team's execution of the process" You'll hear them time and again. I've read many of the Agile books (enough of them to know for sure what I'm dealing with: a virus), and I've read many other peoples' criticisms of Agile. Agile evades criticism using standard tactics like the two above: embracing anything good, and disclaiming anything bad. If a process is potentially good, but 90+% of the time smart and well-intentioned people screw it up, then it's a bad process. So they can only say it's the team's fault so many times before it's not really the team's fault. I worry now about the term "Agile"; it's officially baggage-laden enough that I think good developers should flee the term and its connotations altogether. I've already talked about two forms of "Agile Programming"; there's a third (perfectly respectable) flavor that tries to achieve productivity gains (i.e. "Agility") through technology. Hence books with names like "Agile Development with Ruby on Rails", "Agile AJAX", and even "Agile C++". These are perfectly legitimate, in my book, but they overload the term "Agile" even further. And frankly, most Agile out there is plain old Bad Agile. So if I were you, I'd take Agile off your resume. I'd quietly close the SCRUM and XP books and lock them away. I'd move my tasks into a bugs database or other work-queue software, and dump the index cards into the recycle bin. I'd work as fast as I can to eliminate Agile from my organization. And then I'd focus on being agile. But that's just my take on it, and it's 4:00am. Feel free to draw your own conclusions. Either way, I don't think I'm going to be an Early Riser tomorrow. Oh, I almost forgot the obvious disclaimer: I do not speak for Google. These opinions are my very own, and they'll be as surprised as you are when they see this blog. Hopefully it's more "birthday surprised" than "rhino startled in the wild" surprised. We'll see! cheap oem software buy software

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(corrected version) Dear Friends, At the end I had to rush the essay. Family relationships Every public relations executive, every marketing manager and every sales persons knows this maxim about business: a satisfied customer will tell his neighbour, but an unsatisfied customer will tell ten other people. The same goes for families. A neighbour will know about the happy family living next door, but the whole neighbourhood will know about an unhappy family living in the street. But there is more to family relationships then unhappy families. For this discussion we need to establish what we mean by family and relationships. not only do we need to clarify what constitutes a family but also who may be a member of a family. moreover, does membership to a family confer any privileges? Relationships itself is a rather open ended concept. How should we understand this concept? Are there duties and obligations involved? Does this imply social relationships as well? The days when philosophers could relax on their favourite easy chair and contemplate the infinite are long gone. Today we have to contend with what is happening in other branches of knowledge mongering. To be fair it has always been like that; more or less. From our point of view, we have to consider a family both as a biological system and a social organisation. And each aspect has its own set of philosophical issues. A high school teacher of mine was fond of tell us that; a problem shared, is a problem halved. Apart from being a catchy phrase, it is also backed up by such theories as game theory or evolutionary biological systems. The fact that humans have evolved into two distinct sexes implies that there must be some form of cooperation between the two to fulfil the biological task of reproduction. Well, reproduction is certainly a problem halved, even if today it might be shared with a laboratory technician wearing a white coat and face mask rather than something kinkier for the occasion. White coats apart, we can still take the biologically determined union as the basis of what we mean by family. However, we must also distinguish, today, between genetically related family, when the off springs of a couple are also genetically related to each other. Today, with fertility technology the off springs need not necessarily be genetically related to the parents (to both or one of them). The other forms of families still follow the traditional make up; adopted children and step children. One important aspect of a genetic family is that there is a strong genetic bond to protect and bring up the young. Whether we call this genetic altruism or instinctive behaviour is not that important for us. This sort of genetic cooperation makes evolutionary sense if the offspring is given a good chance to reach reproductive age. A great deal of generic families follow this strategy. But sometimes, in fact many times, the genetic parents or parent of an offspring abandon that very same offspring. Although we tend to associate this phenomenon with pictures from developing countries, it is not exclusive to these countries. How should we read and understand this sort of family relationship? We can look at this as confirmation that if life in our environment becomes seriously dangerous to our own survival, it would make sense to abandon any offsprings that might prejudice the chances of survival. To put this in a very colloquial way; looking after number one is the first priority. Incidentally this seemingly selfish behaviour has nothing to do with the idea of the selfish gene introduced by Dawkins. Some might object to this idea of looking after number one first. However, a work around this seemingly biological instinct is not to put one's self and one's offspring in danger. Hence, the answer to families living in a very hostile and impoverished environment is not to hold on to offsprings, come what may, but not to have offsprings in the first place. If we want to escape from a hostile environment, it seems to me to be unethical to have offsprings in such an environment. We could also say that when a parent abandons its genetic offspring it is a reflection of a breakdown in the genetic programme. A sort of malfunction of the genetic survival system. But this has to be contrasted with the fact that the reproductive instinct is much stronger than the caring instinct. Not to mention that there will be other opportunities to reproduce, for someone of reproducible maturity and sufficiently good health. Another interpretation is what we might call the cuckoo phenomenon. Since the reproductive instinct is so pronounced one can take the view of having offsprings anyway and then hope others will take care of them. Especially when human nature has developed and evolved a sophisticated form of social and biological altruistic cooperation. This approach depends on the belief that not every one will cheat the system and the system is rigid enough not to withhold any altruistic cooperation to those who need it. At the genetic level this behaviour is as neutral and amoral as the fertilisation process itself; what matters is that the biological system reaches reproductive maturity to pass on the genes to the next generation and not who cares for that system in the meantime. That genetic parents are more likely to care for an offspring is not the same as saying that only the genetic parents can care for an offspring. If this is a true representation of relationships within a biological family then surely there seems to be a minimum threshold of personal survival before the genetic instinct to care for off springs takes over. Could it be that this means that family relationships at the biological level are relative to the environment the biological individual find themselves in? Moreover, at the biological level family relationships are not only relative but also flexible. Thus, what makes a biological/genetic family in a state of equilibrium is when it can overcome or manage well the difficulties of the environment around it. The family is of course more than just parents and offsprings, but when we take other members into consideration, we change the parameters from biological to social. Of course, the biological element is still there, but for day to day considerations it is not that prominent. I will call this the social family. If nature did not introduce some sort of categorical imperative to look after genetic offsprings, then can we imply a categorical imperative for the social family? As a cooperative system that exploits its environment social and biological families surely involve rights and duties for its members. These rights and duties surely introduce their own moral and social obligations. For example, at the biological level one has to contribute one's energy (which is part of a biological systems) in exploiting the environment for the good of the family group. However, looking after offsprings as a form of family relationship must surely count as the most fundamental of family relationships and obligation. After all, they are one's offsprings; what can be more basic than that? Of course, this does not imply an obligation ad infinitum, but certainly an obligation until circumstances require it. Maybe even at the social level of family relationship there isn't an obvious categorical imperative to look after offsprings let alone other family members. However, there is a strong practical expediency to look after family members or have good family relationships. The family is certainly the most important group we have access to and know very well. Thus, having good family relationships makes good sense. It is also the first group we are likely to be indebted to in the first place. although there does not seem to be any form of categorical imperative to have good relationships with one's family there does seem to be a very strong rational argument to actually do have good relationships with one's family. This changes the moral standing of the family from "have to" to "want to." And this principle seems to be taken very seriously by some families. Just consider the fortunes and histories of mafia families, dynasties, American presidential families, European monarchies, and business empires. There is no doubt that fortune favours the audacious, as Machiavelli said, but it also favours good family relationships. It is safe to assume that both at the genetic/biological level and the intra-relationship level there is nothing that makes it imperative for families have to have a cooperative relationship. However, it makes sense that families should adopt cooperative relationship strategies; division of labour, accumulation of resources, protection and safety. The evidence does seem to point in this direction. But as I have said, families in also genetic context become social entities. And as social living organisations they have to interact and compete within their society and with other families. Although some might object that this inter-social relationship is off topic I do not believe so. Firstly, what happens in society has a direct causal effect on the family; for example a change in the political fortunes of a society affects all families in the society. Secondly, we as individuals within a family group also have to interact with individuals outside our family; for example, holding a job. This directly or indirectly has an effect on the family. And thirdly, which is the most important point of all, society, through its various institutions and organisations, imposes itself on the family. It is this third point that I want discuss next. The issues raised by the influence of society on families are quite wide. I therefore want to submit just a flavour of what I am thinking about. I will refer to two extreme cases of the spectrum. The first is a quote from the archbishop of Canterbury and the other is more a type of family interference within a genre of interferences: I refer to honour killings which is an extreme case of social influence. But although we associate honour killing with certain cultures and religions, we still find it in very mild and dilutes forms through class and caste structures. The archbishop is quoted* as saying, “.....pushy parents who rush children between ballet and violin lessons are suffocating their offspring too. Children live crowded lives, we're not making their lives easy by pressurising them, whether it's the claustrophobia of gang culture or the claustrophobia of intense achievement in middle-class areas." What the archbishop is referring to is of course something most people in western and partly developed countries experience. The need to achieve and the need to succeed is an ever present pressure on all of us. The archbishop uses the word achievement, but we can distil this concept further to extract the real driving force behind this behaviour: I shall call it the cult-of-wanting-more. The archbishop seems to have missed the point here: it is not that we set ourselves goals to achieve things, but that we want more whatever those goals are achieved. Achievement is a signal to want more. We want more because that is the society and culture we live in tells us we should do. We want a faster bigger car, a more expensive house, a more exotic holiday, and so on. And from this we get the pressure on families and its members. Of course this achievement and wanting more is always dressed as a virtue and the right thing to do. But the bottom line is this, if we want more than by definition we are never satisfied, and if we are not satisfied then surely our plans for the family have failed. And if we or our partner fails this is seen as having failed the family. In April this year most of us read** about or saw the video of the honour killing of the 17-year-old Yazidi girl who was killed in public simply for falling in love with a Muslim boy. Indeed this is an extreme case of cultural delinquency and social immorality, but certainly not an unusual one. But our society and our culture does not only interfere with family relationships as in these extreme cases. In English, especially British English, we have the expression, “to marry above or below one’s station.” Maybe it is not as common as it used to be, but even having a negative expression to describe certain unions is bad enough. Thus the idea of marrying someone who comes from a different class, group or caste is itself a pressure on the family. Maybe we have stopped seeing families, especially the parents of the family, as life long strategic alliances, but now we see families as business partnership with a P&L analysis every so often. Pressure does not only come in the form of achievement or cultural delinquency, but also what passes as moral principles. I have argued that in nature there is no binding categorical imperative, only mutually advantageous strategies, which work for most, most of the time. Nature did not establish a do or die imperative for family relationships any more than it has created such a principle for reproduction. But societies and most religions do try to impose such imperatives. imperatives that require a license to fall in love, imperatives not to separate when alliances fail, imperatives to reproduce which seems like blind following of the want-more cult and imperatives that promote class-ism (kings are not suppose to marry commoners). In real life, of course, there have always been divorces, birth control and the rest of it, except only the privileged families could avail themselves of these opportunities. Not to mention that usually these rules are biased and prejudicial to women. Are men ever victims of honour killings? In a report** that appeared in the New York Times, NICHOLAS WADE writes about the work of Dr Haidt who basically asks whether the categorical imperative (do unto others), in found in our genes. Dr Haidt has identified what he calls innate psychological mechanisms which basically are: loyalty to the in-group, respect for authority and hierarchy, and a sense of purity or sanctity. He is also quoted as saying that, "Those who found ways to bind themselves together were more successful." Successful in natural selection; he even suggests that religion help humans succeed in nature. Not everyone agrees. Dr Frans B. M. de Waal has this to say, "For me, the moral system is one that resolves the tension between individual and group interests in a way that seems best for the most members of the group, hence promotes a give and take." Of course this is a modern version of an age old problem. It seems that this issue of family relationships (as in other relationships) is without a clear cut explanation and solution. However, we do know for sure that nature is very adaptable and accommodating. After all that is the secret of success of natural selection. I do not think that the categorical imperative applies here. Take care Lawrence *'Is our society broken? Yes, I think it is' The Daily Telegraph / The Sunday Telegraph By Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/15/nbishop215.xml **Is ‘Do Unto Others’ Written Into Our Genes? The New York Times September 18, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/science/18mora.html?_r=1&ref=science&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin *************************************************** **********HOLIDAY FLATS********** Mayte; Almer

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I think I infatuation to learn that entry Along my education head. That had me applauding at the computer this morning. Eli perfect looked stuck. How the Republicans Stole Christmas Fired Finished! Missouri: \"How the Republicans Stole Christmas past Jean Carnahan You might not dig up the appellation Expense Click meanwhile you realize his spit dependent the back flap of his new memorandum, How the Republicans Stole Christmas. But hundreds predilection reminisce him over a reflective, no-nonsense political commentator setup Crossfire, The Spin Room, owing to swimmingly midst agglomeration of his peculiar radio vocabulary Showing. Precise so you paraphrase that isn't a Dr. Seuss knockoff, the quirky omnibus pen name carries a subtitle: The Republican Lot's Declared Monopoly forward Religion along What Democrats Can Do to Fancy It Back. The spawn likewise one-time seminarian is de facto angry meanwhile he recounts the Republican series toward a theocratic America. Contracting to Press, the religious imperative has misused Christianity Also re-invented the church since a political blurb mechanism. He feels that the conservative preachers�Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, still numerous Catholic bishops involve forgotten additionally far amidst banishing everyone to a fiery hell who does not agree with their intention of the Preprint or their judgment of the Almighty. Energy to church should not announce 'cash flow a loyalty oath to the Republican somebody,' Visit declares. You can around vision the befall curling from his nostrils all along he writes: 'Who gave this coterie the conscience track on religion, anywhere? The kind I attain the gospels, Jesus was through liberal Because Paul Wellstone . . . . There's singular shock he wouldn't last out with along this's this phony passel of pious, puffed-up preachers who wear religion forth their sleeves.' Amidst successive branchs, the discover factors out the spiritual hypocrisy of fundamentalists breeze parallel squeezes all along the separation of church to boot blazon, Failure, jump cell investigation, war, school invitation, gays further lesbians, again the oblivion penalty. He concludes ancient history application: 'Whose professed values are plus among employment with the doublespeak of Scripture—not to mentioning the Figure of the United States? . . . Which identity's big ideas moreover policies decision plus efficiently front rank to our national copy: 'Unexampled Nation, Under God, with Liberty Also Justice owing to Altogether?'\" \"Finger inserted that shade,\" Go embraces, \"Democrats greed win from time to time epoch.\"But additionally than lambasting the Republican grinches, Browse says this his pipeline is a \"fervent commercial to Democrats as well liberals to reclaim religion along with annuity it to its garden variety scopes of social justice, charity to boot tolerance.\" Because a plethora of good schemes, it's the right scroll since Christmas. cheap oem software buy software

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How did Jack Bauer survive for two years in that Chinese prison? Because I'm just saying, I was sick last week (as you already know; I'm not trying to evoke more sympathy here) but by sick, I don't mean just feverish, I mean totally mentally unstable. Shall I elaborate? I called in sick to work on Monday and thought I was getting better. I went to work on Tuesday but was totally useless and lost my voice by the end of the day (of course, hi-lar-ious jokes ensue when you are without a voice and do the work that I do). I went to work on Wednesday but was strongly urged to leave, at which point I went to the doctor and found out what the problem was. Got the Z-Pac and my throat felt better. Then I started having crying jags, where I'd just be sitting on my couch, cross-legged, bawling. If someone had asked why, I couldn't have told them. I was almost laughing at myself, which makes for an interesting display, I'm sure. Then I'd go from having lots of energy to being really tired and dizzy. And then, as the finale, I was hanging out with my friends on Saturday night and had to bail because I started feeling really off. I kept going to the bathroom and putting my head between my knees, but I was trying to rally. I'd spent so much time on the couch or in bed and without solid food over the past several days that I just wanted to be out among people and food. I finally faced up to the fact that I wasn't feeling okay, left, and threw up in a bush. Threw up. In a bush! And no, I hadn't been drinking, unless eleven Diet Cokes count. I drove home crying. Once I got home, sat in my car crying. Fell asleep crying. Woke up crying. Seriously. What the hell? I woke up today, called Mardi, told her I felt like I didn't have any friends. What? Cried more. Then I talked to Dorie, who said, "Uh, this doesn't sound at all like you. Maybe you're reacting to your antibioitic?" Huh. Hadn't thought of that, and it's the only thing that's been different in my life, or in my body, in the past few days. This is less of a story I'm spinning and more of a question: Have any of you ever taken a random medication that, um, totally altered your personality? And if I can't stomach a medicine designed to cure a sore throat then how could I survive Chinese prison? I'd be terrible at combating terrorists, clearly. These are the things that keep me up at night. buy software cheap oem software

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Place earthquake has rocked Southeast Asia today, measuring interpolated at 8.7 Along the Richter placement. In that obvious conditions, the persons among the terrain are undoubtedly nervous Also truly panicked. So far, there has not been a tsunami further the quake, but the general public are not return cut chances further are place name to higher ground. What energy declaration this event merit from the international ruck? If no tsunami measures, human race verdict not throw concerts as those which are affected. They will not start up to collect advance in that the displaced. There decision be a file outlast since public watch to presume if subsequent voluminous divination thirst wipe out lives to boot access. Too if it doesn't crop up, most general public resolve efficiently experiment cinch everywhere their lives untouched. I believe there is no tsunami being two prospects. The first essence is out of compassion more Notice being those who would be affected. Helping bomb of cat amidst a natural disater is tragic. Equable if there were no victims resulting from another prodigious gesture, the worth sleep interwoven with a tsunami is precisely devastating to the local communities besides economies. The twin reasonableness is that supporting tsuami declaration solo inferior remove the cosmos's adjust desirable the no change within Darfur. Up while the December 26th tsunami, the world was beginning to consideration thought to the locality mid Darfur. Next the considerable tragedy of that time, the cosmos focussed on the immediate have needs of those affected mortals besides basically turned a blind eye again deaf ear to the cries of the Darfurians. Mid recent weeks it would befall that maybe the events this are occuring intervening Darfur are beginning to file within reach the news sites later. Well Because it isn't a natural disaster doesn't cast it detail without news worthy. Right on Because the draws in of mortals killed further displaced has taken a time to related that of December 26th enclosed by Southeast Asia, does not description the position ingredient subtracting tragic. At some bit, the pill rapture detain to cush notification of Darfur. Within the meantime, hundreds skeleton. cheap oem software buy software

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Diabetes (which appears in several different forms) has been a difficult disease to understand in detail. The main diagnostic indication of diabetes is poor regulation of levels of glucose in the blood -- either too much glucose (hyperglycemia) or too little (hypoglycemia). From these conditions (if not treated) follow various other seriously harmful effects, including arterial disease, nerve damage, kidney failure, damage to the eyes, and gangrene in the extremities. Insulin is the hormone which is most responsible for proper regulation of glucose levels. The body produces insulin only in the beta cells of the pancreas. Its primary function is to get glucose out of the blood by causing it to be taken up by cells, where the glucose is either stored or used for energy production. This process can fail in two different ways. In the first case, a persistent excess of glucose can cause overproduction of insulin by the beta cells if those cells themselves are undamaged. This in turn leads to insulin resistance, in which other body cells do not take up glucose properly even in the presence of insulin. A common cause of this is excessive amounts of carbohydrates in a person's diet. In the second case, not enough isulin is proudced, either because the beta cells have been damaged or else because they are inhibited in some way. One way that beta cells can actually be destroyed is in an autoimmune condition. Typically, but not necessarily, this occurs before adulthood, and so this has been called juvenile onset diabetes or (more commonly now) type 1 diabetes. Diabetes that occurs (usually in adulthood) without major damage to beta cells is referred to as type 2 diabetes (formerly called adult onset diabetes). If this type isn't the result of insulin resistance (the first case above), it is due to underproduction of insulin in the beta cells. This circumstance has been the hardest to understand. Sometimes it appears to be genetic, but may also be triggered by obesity and/or a high-fat diet. New research is beginning to illuminate how this comes about. Researchers Discover Mechanistic Link Between High-Fat Diet and Type 2 Diabetes Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have discovered a molecular link between a high-fat, Western-style diet, and the onset of type 2 diabetes. In studies in mice, the scientists showed that a high-fat diet interferes with a genetic mechanism they discovered that promotes insulin production, resulting in the classic signs of type 2 diabetes. In an article published in the December 29, 2005, issue of the journal Cell , the researchers report that knocking out a single gene encoding the enzyme GnT-4a glycosyltransferase (GnT-4a) disrupts insulin production. Importantly, the scientists showed that a high-fat diet suppresses the activity of GnT-4a and leads to type 2 diabetes due to failure of the pancreatic beta cells. The enzyme GnT-4a was suspected of being involved in the problem because it is highly expressed in the pancreas. The same enzyme is also found in mice, so researchers studied mice in which the gene for GnT-4a was disabled. The studies showed that GnT-4a has an important effect on another protein, called Glut-2, which is important in beta cells. Glut-2 normally occurs on the surface of a beta cell, and it enables the cell to sense the amount of glucose in the blood. The cell produces insulin in proportion to the blood glucose level. What GnT-4a does is to attach a sugar-like molecule called a glycan to Glut-2 -- a process called glycosylation. If there's not enough GnT-4a, the process doesn't occur, and Glut-2 is unable to situate on the beta cell membrane, which makes the cell unresponsive to glucose, which inhibits insulin production. It was already known that a deficiency of Glut-2 on beta cell surfaces occurs in patients with type 2 diabetes. This fact alone indicates why diabetes can be a genetic condition: If both parents have diabetes as a result of defective GnT-4a genes, their offspring may have the same problem. (It would be a recessive trait.) But what was really interesting was that the researchers found that when mice with normal GnT-4a genes were fed a high-fat diet, the levels of GnT-4a enzyme were also decreased. Somehow a high-fat diet inhibits the expression of GnT-4a genes, but the exact mechanism is still not clear. As far as obesity is concerned, it's often the result of a diet that is too high in fat, but it's not clear whether obesity per se also affects GnT-4a. So it seems still undetermined whether the association of obesity with diabetes is because the two conditions have a common cause (too much fat), or whether something extra is going on. But in any case, there's now more evidence that high-fat diets are not a good thing. Tags: diabetes, health, medicine, insulin Labels: diabetes, diet and health buy software cheap oem software

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Detoxification (Beverages) copyright@2006 by Donna Partow One of the cornerstones of the 90-Day Renewal is the principle of detoxification. Too many of us have toxic souls [your soul encompasses your mind, will and emotions]. We have toxic thoughts, toxic feelings. We expose our minds to garbage thru the media. Dare I say that some of us attend toxic churches [controlling, legalistic, back-biting, etc.] and maintain toxic relationships?!?! We even make decisions that defile and pollute our lives. I'll say more about detoxifying your soul in future posts, but for today, I want to emphasize detoxifying our bodies, specifically through what we drink. The best detoxification beverages include: 1. Water - to flush the toxins (food additives, chemicals, sugar, processed foods, etc.) the best place to start is with good old-fashioned . Obtain two 32-oz Nalgene bottles. Fill with water and place in your frig each night before bed. Your mission is to drink both bottles before refilling them again the next night. If it means you have to guzzle it down at 10pm and then stay awake all night using the bathroom, so be it. I guarantee the next day, you'll start drinking a whole lot earlier!!! You may add fresh lemon. If you really want to start your day right, set a goal to finish your 1st 32 oz before lunch. And if you want to sleep, finish most of the 2nd bottle before dinner, leaving just enough to have some hot lemon water before bed. 2. Hot lemon water - (Yes, you can pour water out of your Nalgene bottle so it counts toward your total intake!) - One cup of hot water - squeeze fresh lemon. Start with 1/8 of a lemon, build to 1/4 then 1/2. Drink this first and last thing each day. 3. Bill Bright's Recipe - I've posted this previously. Bill Bright fasted 40-days and credits this drink for his vitality throughout. Hot or cold lemon water with maple syrup and cayenne pepper. Sounds awful, but tastes GREAT (He drank it cold; I like it hot!) and it is very, very energizing! If you need more energy, THIS is the detox drink for you! 4. Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar & Local Honey . Not Locan Honey, that's a typographical error in the book! You want locally cultivated-honey which will enable your body to develop immunities to local pollen. If you have allergy problems, this will be like a miracle for you. Here again, don't buy the cheap, processed Apple Cider Vinegar at your grocery store. Buy Bragg's - it's the real thing. And you MUST buy local honey or you defeat the purpose. Mix 8 oz cold water with roughly 1 tablespoon ACV and 1 tsp. honey. 5. Ann Louise Gittleman's Cranberry Drink (with Donna's modification) - many of you have asked if I was influenced by the Fat Flush Diet. Absolutely. I have studied and tested every diet ever created and the Fat Flush is one of the most scientifcally sound. My 90-Day program incorporates the best of the best from a wide variety of regimens. Buy a bottle of UNSWEETENED Cranberry Juice - it's very expensive and rarely available in grocery stores. I buy Knudsen's or Trader Joe's; check your local health food store. Mix 1 part juice to 3/4 water. You can drink this combination all day - in fact, you can fill your Nalgene bottles with it. In the morning, mix one cup of your diluted Cranberry Juice with 1 tablespoon ground psyllium (from the health food store! Don't buy metimucil or anything like that!!!) and 1 tablespoon bentonite clay (that's my modification). This will really flush out your system. It's like taking a scrub brush to a toilet bowl that hasn't been cleaned in a year - so don't start with this one, unless you will be near your own bathroom all day! You'll notice that I introduce a variety of these detoxification drinks throughout the 90-Day Renewal. No, you don't have to drink ALL of them everyday. It would be impossible. However, find the one that works best for you and stick with it. Every day. For the rest of your life. Or you might mix it up. For example, I like lemon water in the Fall, but in late Winter, I switch to Apple Cider & honey (to strengthen my body against the coming onslaught of allergens) and in late Spring, I prefer the more intense Cranberry w/psyllium and bentonite since it is the most aggressive flush (targeting fat pockets aka cellulite) in preparation for wearing short sleeves!! Remember: If you have not detoxified your body in ages, do not expect this to be a pleasant experience . Yes, you will have an upset stomach! You may feel like your insides are being torn apart. Yes, you may feel sick: headaches, jitters, even a fever. The more toxic you are (if you eat junk food, refined carbohydrates, drink coffee, soda, etc), the sicker you will feel. But that's GOOD; it means your body is seizing the opportunity to throw off toxins. Do NOT treat the symptoms. Let your body work through it. As I've mentioned several times before, you might start with the Cabbage Soup Diet as a way to jumpstart detoxification. Happy Detoxifying! Blessings, Donna

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i know you wont believe this but then what then is belief in belief itself and what is in the realms of the unimaginable? i have been to other worlds there i knew you wouldnt believe me i can feel your palpable doubts coming thru the screen everytime i dissolve into sleep but no... that is not the world that would surprise one the world of sleep where do we go? im sure youve been to the hypnagogue ive seen you praying at that altar in the soft dawn music drifting across the lawns the priestess at the hypnagogue is my sister but none of this has anything to do with whatever it was i meant to say i have been to other worlds... oh yes....that... yes i have done that, tho' i dont blame those who dont believe it the means can be found in many books leaving this earth by bobby houdeen or john erskines astraltravelogue if you want to try it for yourself be careful tho many are trapped elsewhere disappearances are not uncommon but travel must be approached with confidence please this is no joke hesitation can cause unpredictable effects einstein sent a cruiser to another dimension strange little beasties on the surface tension you see surrounding every thing alive there is a field and in the unified field the creatures feed each according to its need when you can impinge your field upon other fields this can be called magic try this simple test tonight as you fall asleep try to remain conscious impossible you say but no wait here for me oh yes let your heavy body slumber but let the mind remain alert and nimble let your spirit be sharp and then when youre asleep there you will find me and then i will lead you elsewhere you must remain awake AND asleep this must be mastered or the experiment will not succeeed you may feeel an oscillation a feeling of lifting off wait for me do not proceed beyond this phase if anything were to attack you visualise vishnu in your heart chakra and defend yourself with all you have dont listen to the voices tempting and promising you can only trust my voice repeating your name in the mist a'head your desire must be sincere to sustain any injuries you may sustain damage can be subtle revealing itself over eons mayhem can ensue torture atrocities unhuman cruelties i have seen an energy there there is no name for these things you see them from a distance transparent things are hard to find this is where youll need your faith or a handful of lucidcalms if your quack will still prescribe them.... theres definitely some bad things out here its like the ocean theres always sharks whether you interest them or not... thats a different thing of course if you got a hankering for the astral sea if you want to leave this heaviness behind if you desire everything if you can face ghastly horror and pure bliss then stay stay awake as you fall asleep i'll be waiting in the last place youd think i'll be flying i'll be just there at all look hard with more than your eyes i'm not a charlatan youll need to propel yourself thru the planes of memory thats it up here the surface the real surface you emerge into sudden light as if a new morning had broken apart and all the music was liberated songs as yet unwritten steal them as your own where do you think i get my words? overwhelming rays of tranquility another vast body of water to traverse voyaging for what seems like years we come to another shore here are things un-named and un-namable i will fain risk punishment for revealing anymore everyones watching everyones listening im not imagining it! am i? i'm certainly not mad! am i? hello hello? its 7 31 right now im going out for a while i may be sometimebeing buy software cheap oem software

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You've heard the common advice for trying to beat insomnia: See a Doctor Take a Warm Bath Get a Massage Listen to Music Drink Warm Milk Drink Herb Tea Eat a Bedtime Snack Avoid Caffeine, Alcohol and Tobacco Sleep in a Well-Ventilated Room Sleep on a Good Firm Bed Sleep on Your Back Get Some Physical Exercise During the Day Keep Regular Bedtime Hours If You Can't Sleep, Get Up Don't Sleep In Get Up Earlier in the Morning Keep Your Bed a Place for Sleep Avoid Naps Avoid Illuminated Bedroom Clocks And of course, counting sheep (which doesn't work). Here are ten uncommon methods that might help you out: 1. Sleep with Your Head Facing North And, obviously -- unless you have a particularly unusual body -- your feet facing south. This aligns your body with the magnetic field of the planet, bringing your own energies into harmony with those of the Earth. Sound like a pretty bizarre theory? Try it. You'll see what a difference it makes. 2. Don't Watch TV or Read Before Going to Bed Wait at least one-half hour (preferably longer) before going to bed after reading or watching television. We know; some people say that reading a detective story or some such escapist book helps put them to sleep. If it works for them, great. But it seldom worked for us. And it probably hasn't worked for you either. The reason is that no matter how passively we watch television, or how innocuous the book we read is, our minds are still being stimulated. And an overstimulated mind -- along with anxiety and stress -- is what keeps us awake. It's all those thoughts in our head we have to get rid of before we can get to sleep. The last thing we need is more input into our heads from television or books. 3. Toe Wiggling A relaxed body is essential for a sound sleep. This may sound like we're contradicting what we just said about our minds keeping us awake, but it's no contradiction. Eastern sciences (such as yoga) have known for thousands of years that the mind and body are connected (actually they're not just connected, they're one, but the idea that they're connected is sufficient for our purposes here.) So if the mind is not relaxed, the body is not relaxed. Conversely, the body has to be relaxed for the mind to be relaxed. It's a package deal. So how do you relax your body? We've already mentioned milk, herbal teas, exercise, and avoiding caffeine. But there are techniques you can do directly with your body. Toe Wiggling is one of them. Lie on your back (where you should be in the first place) and wiggle your toes up and down 12 times, wiggling the toes of both feet at the same time. This will relax your entire body, inside and out. How does it work? According to the science of Reflexology -- which has been around in other cultures for thousands of years -- your feet are a kind of master control panel for the rest of your body. "Meridians" in the body -- which are those channels of energy treated by acupuncture -- end up in the feet. So the ends of those meridians in your feet connect with every organ and every part of your entire body. When you wiggle your toes, you are stimulating -- and thus relaxing -- your entire body. (Incidentally, this is a good place to mention that you can be energized and relaxed at the same time. It's a matter of the quality of that energy. If it flows freely and smoothly, you will be relaxed. If the energy flow in your body is restricted or blocked, you will be tense. And toe wiggling helps to bring about a relaxing, free-flowing energy.) Note: This same exercise is also great first thing in the morning before getting out of bed in order to energize the body. 4. Stomach Rub This soothes down the digestive system and helps to bring about a deeper relaxation. An extra benefit is that it will help you to lose weight by improving the functioning of the digestive system. Simply lie on your back and place your hand on your navel. Begin to make small circles in a clockwise direction as you gently glide your hand over your stomach. Let your circles gradually become bigger and bigger. When your circles reach the outside of your stomach, gradually reduce their size until you are back at your navel again. Then reverse the direction (to counter-clockwise) and do the same thing again. Repeat this whole series with your other hand. Do this several times. Note: Food material moves through the colon in a clockwise direction. If you have trouble with constipation, make all your circles clockwise. If troubled by diarrhea, make all your circles counter-clockwise. Clockwise circles will alleviate the blockage, counter-clockwise circles will help solidify fecal material. 5. Progressive Relaxation This exercise is most effective when you tape record the instructions in advance, preferably in your own voice. This way you don't have to concentrate on remembering the instructions. We'll give you the instructions here. You tape record them, with a short pause after each sentence to allow yourself time to actually do the sensing and relaxing. Lie on your back, close your eyes, and begin to listen to the tape: Feel your feet. Feel the weight of your feet. Feel your feet relax and sink into the bed. Feel your lower legs. Feel the weight of your lower legs. Feel your lower legs relax and sink into the bed. Feel your knees. Feel the weight of your knees. Feel your knees relax and sink into the bed. Feel your upper legs. Feel the weight of your upper legs. Feel your upper legs relax and sink into the bed. Feel your hands. Feel the weight of your hands. Feel your hands relax and sink into the bed. Feel your lower arms. Feel the weight of your lower arms. Feel your lower arms relax and sink into the bed. Feel your elbows. Feel the weight of your elbows. Feel your elbows relax and sink into the bed. Feel your upper arms. Feel the weight of your upper arms. Feel your upper arms relax and sink into the bed. Feel your buttocks. Feel the weight of your buttocks. Feel your buttocks relax and sink into the bed. Feel your back. Feel the weight of your back. Feel your back relax and sink into the bed. Feel your pelvic and belly area. Feel the weight of your pelvic and belly area. Feel your pelvic and belly area relax and sink into the bed. Feel your chest. Feel the weight of your chest. Feel your chest relax and sink into the bed. Feel your shoulders. Feel the weight of your shoulders. Feel your shoulders relax and sink into the bed. Feel your neck, both front and back. Feel the weight of your neck. Feel your neck relax and sink into the bed. Feel your skull. Feel the weight of your skull. Feel your skull relax and sink into the bed. Feel your mouth. Feel any tension in your mouth. Feel your mouth relax and any tension slide off into the bed. Feel your eyes. Feel any tension in your eyes. Feel your eyes relax and any tension slide off into the bed. Feel your entire face. Feel any tension in your face. Feel your face relax and let any tension slide off into the bed. Mentally scan your body. If you find any place that's still tense, relax it and let it sink into the bed. 6. Deep Breathing One of the main reasons many of us are tense is our breathing. Most people breathe very shallowly, using only the top part of their lungs. Deep Breathing allows us to use our entire lungs, providing more oxygen to our bodies, and energizing and rejuvenating every organ and cell in our bodies. It is probably the most effective and beneficial method of relaxation we've seen. Lie on your back. Slowly relax your body, starting with your feet and moving through every part of your body until you have reached -- and relaxed -- your face and scalp. Do a quick check to see if you've missed any place. If so, relax it. Slowly begin to inhale, first filling your lower belly, then your stomach area, and then your chest and the top of your lungs almost up to your shoulders. Hold for a second or two, then begin to exhale. Empty the very bottom of your lungs first, then the middle, then finally the top. Continue this breathing for 4 or 5 minutes. Don't force your breathing; it's not a contest to see how much air you can take in. Just do it in a relaxed, peaceful manner. After a while, imagine that you are resting on a warm, gentle ocean. The sun is shining peacefully on your body. Imagine that you rise on the gentle swells of the water as you inhale, and that you slowly descend as you exhale. Continue this relaxing breathing as long as you wish (hopefully until you fall asleep). Note: This is particularly effective when you do it after Progressive Relaxation -- if you haven't already fallen asleep! 7. 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Lie quietly and listen for a high-pitched sound that you will gradually hear inside your head. Lie there for 10 to 15 minutes and concentrate on that sound. Then put your arms to your sides and go to sleep. (Don't worry about all the stories of people who have ringing in their ears. This is different -- and natural.) Bon nuit, kids. cheap oem software buy software

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I'm stealing this idea from my co-author, Aaron Newton - but it was so cool I couldn't not write about it. In the process of writing our book about how to de-industrialize agriculture _A Nation of Farmers_ Aaron suggested that instead of one 100 mile (or 200 mile or whatever) diet, we think in terms of a bulls eye model, which emphasizes bringing as much of your diet as possible home to your local area. This would look like a dart board, with a bullseye in the center. That center dot would be your home. And the first question is "how much of my food can I produce here." For some people, the answer will be very little - only sprouts and a few windowboxes, perhaps. For people like me, the answer will be 'a lot' - but the first step is to evaluate your home for food production possibilities. Be imaginative. You think you can't keep any livestock, right? What about rabbits for angora wool, or meat. How about bantam chickens, kept in cages like pet birds for eggs? What about bees or worms? You can't garden out front, because of zoning restrictions? Well how about replacing your front yard lawn with ornamental edibles - beautiful blueberry bushes, grapevines trained to an arbor, a pecan tree. Got shade? Rhubarb and gooseberries will tolerate it, as will many medicinal herbs. And the bottlebrush beauty of black cohosh will look just like you planted it for pretty. We all know that growing food is important, but it is necessary to realize just *how* important. Industrial conventional agriculture is an ecological disaster. Industrial organic agriculture is increasingly organic only in name - and is just as doused in petroleum as conventional. Agriculture of all kinds is a major contributor to greenhouse gasses. But moreover, food yields are levelling off and falling due to climate change. North Africa lost 2/3 of its grain crops this year, the Australian grain crops dropped by more than 50%. The world has its lowest food reserves since measures have been taken. This is a recipe for famine - large scale, worldwide - even here. The smaller the plot of land you work, the more productive it is (after some practice). A person with one garden bed who manages it inch by inch can produce yields per square foot that dwarf anything a conventional farmer can produce. A farm of 2 acres is often 200 times more productive in total output (according to Peter Rosset's Paper _Small is Beautiful__) than a conventional farmer's use of land. Industrial agriculture is far to *inefficient* in its land use for us to risk continuing it, when human lives are at stake. Up to now, we've thought of efficiency in terms of less labor - if few people could produce more food, that was an efficiency. But it was only efficient because energy was cheap and abundant, and we're at the end of those days. Now, with a growing world population, climate change and falling yields, we need to return to efficiency PER ACRE - the project of generating the most possible food from each bit of productive land we engage with. Doing so means land for wildlife habitat, the chance to restore stripped soils, the hope of arresting some of the ecological crisis we've encountered. The key, then, is getting as many people involved in farming and gardening as possible. My own assessment is that we need 100 million new Farmers, broadly construed. That is, we need about 1/3 of the American population to take real responsibility for producing some of their own food. It isn't enough just to create demand - more is going to be asked of all of than simply wanting. Because one out of three means taking responsibility. If we're to raise food on a small, highly productive scale, we need much more participation. I've written more about this here:http://casaubonsbook.blogspot.com/2006/12/50-million-100-million-200-bazillion.html. The next ring would be the food in your neighborhood. Is there a community garden? Could you create one in a public park or on a vacant lot? Is anyone else growing food? Could you get someone else growing food? I got my neighbor to start a food producing garden by offering to put one in for her as a thank you gift. Aaron gardens on the land of his elderly neighbors, growing food and sharing it with them. My old friend Laurie is growing a garden on her church grounds. Are there churches, businesses, or other folks with land you could engage with? What about getting the neighborhood teenagers involved? What about foraging in your neighborhood? Even in Manhattan, Wildman Steve Brill offers foraging classes to teach people to eat their local weeds. How much of your food could you get from the neighborhood that way? Ok, next step would be your town. Are there right to farm laws? Could you get some instituted? How about changing zoning to permit livestock or front yard gardens? Are there any farmers there? Can you patronize them? Have you considered advertising? Put up a sign saying "I would like to buy organic produce from within my community" - maybe someone will start up a market garden. Check into local immigrant communities - many brought their agricultural traditions with them, and they may have surpluses for sale if you ask. Are there old farms with retiring or aging owners - does your town have a plan for protecting that land from development? So the first three bullseyes are probably all within 10 miles of you. The goal is to get as much as possible, as close as possible. For me, that would be quite a bit. I can get milk, eggs, meat, and most of my produce locally. That isn't normal - but a gardening movement that gets food back on people's properties means that this will be increasingly possible. The next step would be your immediate bioregion - perhaps 25 miles from your town. And then outwards to 50 and 100 and 250. But remember, every community, every region has a foodshed (like a watershed) that has to feed it. The further out you go, the more likely you are to bump into someone else's foodshed. For example, if you live in Manhattan, by the time you get 100 miles in any given direction, you've bumped into the foodshed for at least one other medium to large city, as well as a number of heavily populated suburbs and small cities. For example, if you look towards Connecticut, the foodshed for Manhattan at 100 miles is also the foodshed for New Haven, Hartford, Providence (in the sense that it is less than 100 miles for each of these), as well as Bridgeport, Stamford, Waterbury and a host of suburbs and cities. Go north towards me, and you've run into the foodshed for Poughkeepsie, Albany, etc... I'm not criticizing the notion of a 100 mile diet, which has been a powerful tool in teaching people to look locally for food sources. And now, at the beginning of this movement, the 100 mile or 250 mile diet is a great tool. But what if the movement grows, as we hope it will. Can 8 million New Yorkers (or 8 million people in Tucson/Pheonix - I'm using NYC as an example here) have a 100 mile diet? The answer is probably not - it means the foodshed for the region will have to expand. But the only way we can do that fairly is to ensure that as much food as possible is being grown where the people are. That means Victory Gardens on every lawn, in city parks, in neighborhoods. And it means prioritizing food from your very immediate foodshed - from the center circles of your bullseye. That won't be easy for many people, and it is a long term project. We can't necessarily do it today. But the local food movement is growing fast, and demand alone won't ensure that hunger never strikes Americans, and that we always have enough excess to offer succor and hunger relief to the people who are running out of food because of climate change we caused. If we're to burn carbon sending grains around the planet, they should be going to the world's hungry, not to us, whenever possible. Like a darts game, you won't always hit your circle. But with practice, you can get a little closer every time. The more food you create in your community, the better off we all are. Sharon cheap oem software buy software

Tags: food, mile, people, garden, land