http://www.businessinsider.de/bald-men-are-more-successful-intelligent-and-masculine-science-says-2017-1?IR=T

Bald men are more successful, intelligent and masculine — science says

• Valentina Resetarits und Gisela Wolf
 
• 25.01.2017, 17:02 
• 411,572

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What do Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Frazier and Steve Ballmer have in common? They are tremendously successful. And also bald.

Coincidence? Probably not. Men with bald heads are often seen as more dominant and successful by everyone around them, according to a study of the University of Pennsylvania.

The american scientist Albert E. Mannes, who just happens to be bald himself, conducted a study in 2012 with 59 subjects. He wanted to find out how people react to men with shaved heads by showing them a series of pictures.

The subjects got to see each photo twice, once of a man with a full head of hair and once of the same man with his hair shaved off. The subjects reported that they thought the bald men were more dominant, bigger and stronger.

One interesting detail: They had to be completely hairless. Bald patches or pattern baldness was seen as less attractive and weaker.

Seth Godin: "Bald men stand by what they have"

The tech-entrepeneur Seth Godin has been bald for 20 years now. He tried to explain why bald men tend to be seen as more dominant to the Wall Street Journal: "I'm not saying that shaving your head makes you successful, but it starts the conversation that you've done something active."

But bald men are not just more powerful, they are also seen as more intelligent. A global study conducted by the psychologist Ronald Henss of the University of Saarland with over 20.000 subjects suggests that bald men are estimated to be older, but also seem wiser and more intelligent.

For a long time scientists believed that bald men were also more sexually potent because hair loss correlates with levels of testosterone.

But unfortunately it doesn’t quite work out that way. Hair loss is not directly caused by testosterone, but by the hormone DHT. DHT is a derivative product of testosterone, but it only affects hair follicles and has no effect on the rest of the body.

But dear baldies, don’t be discouraged: Many people still believe that bald men are more potent. A view that is only strengthened by the no-hair styles of recognized sex symbols like Jason Statham, Bruce Willis and Michael Jordan. Which places you and your masculinity in very good company indeed.

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http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2016/03/three-trends-for-the-next-50-years/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=three-trends-arlookalike

Three Trends for the Next 50 Years

I’m not a big believer in the future. I mean, it will exist—we know that. But that’s about it.

CXO Advisory Group has analyzed the predictions of hundreds of pundits. Are the talking heads on TV right or wrong?

You know, the ones who say Ebola will end the world, or the ones who said Enron was just having accounting problems.

It turns out the pundits’ predictions are right only 47% of the time. I think they are being nice to the pundits. I would say pundits are right about 12% of the time.

But I pulled that number out of a hat, and they did a statistical study, so who knows?

I don’t like making predictions. They get in the way of my digestion. All of that future thinking clogs up the pipes.

But there’s a great way to evaluate whether a prediction is true or not. It involves a simple phrase we all know: “This time things will be different.”

We know that phrase is always wrong. We know that things stay the same.

I’ll give a great example: my 15-year-old doesn’t have email. She doesn’t really use a computer except for homework. But she does use her phone. She texts everyone.

Email has been popular for almost 20 years. But the phone has been popular for over 100 years.

Not that new things are bad. We’re not using the phone from the year 1900. We’re using a phone that is a more powerful computer than the top supercomputers from 20 years ago, and it fits into our pocket.

Two things happen:

• what was popular in the past will be popular for at least as long in the future (expect at least another 100 years of teenage girls texting relationship advice to their friends); and

• what was popular in the past will improve.

I have two experiences as a pundit for the future:

1.) In 2007 I said on CNBC that Facebook would one day be worth $100 billion. At the time it was worth maybe $1 billion. Everyone on the show laughed. I then invested in every Facebook services provider I could find.

Then, 5 years later almost to the day…

2.) In my book, “Choose Yourself!”, written mostly in 2012 but out in 2013, I said that we can look forward to having a “smart toilet” that will diagnose all of our illnesses in our fecal matter and urine. A mini-lab in our bathrooms.

Anyway, recently, MIT said it’s working on just such a toilet.

Cost: $2,000, but it was going to bring the cost down to $100. Count me in.

But there are 10 trends from the past 100 years that I think are important to respect and will be important trends for the next 100 years. Knowing this can help us make money off of them.

(Note: Want to know exactly how I make money off of trends? I’ve used this copy and paste strategy for years – Learn it here.)

Trend #1: Deflation

Most people are scared to death of inflation.

If most people are scared of something (like Ebola), it probably means it was a media or marketing-manufactured fear that will never come true.

The reality is, we live in a deflationary world.

Warren Buffett has said that deflation is much more scary than inflation. It’s scary to him because he sells stuff. It’s great for everyone else because we buy things. However, to be fair, it’s a mixed bag.

When prices go down, people wait to buy, because prices might be cheaper later. This is why some of the scariest points in our economic history were in the 1930s and in 2009 when there was deflation.

How did the government solve the problem? By printing money and going to war. That’s how scary it was.

To solve the problem, we gave 18-year-old kids guns, sent them to another country, and told them to shoot other 18-year-olds.

People have all sorts of statistics about the government debt and the dollar decreasing 97% in value since 1913, etc.

I don’t care about all of that. I want to make money no matter what.

Here’s what I see: my computers are cheaper. Housing prices haven’t gone up in 10 years.

And people are finally starting to realize that paying for higher education isn’t worth as much as it used to be (too much student loan debt and not enough jobs).

All electricity is cheaper. All books are cheaper. And I don’t have to go to the movies to watch a movie. All my music is basically free if I watch it on YouTube.

Don’t get me wrong: inflation exists because the government and the corporations that run it are preventing deflation. But the natural order of things is to deflate.

Eventually something bad will happen, and the carpet will be pulled out from under everyone. Perhaps if we have an inflationary bubble. Then deflation will hit hard, and you have to be prepared.

In a deflationary world, ideas are more valuable than products. If you have ideas that can help people improve their businesses, then you will make a lot of money. 

[Note: I often talk about this in The Altucher Report, where I give money making ideas for everyone from college students to employees to retirees – Learn more here]

For instance, I know one person who was sleeping on his sister’s couch until he started showing people how to give webinars to improve their businesses. Now he makes seven figures a year.

This “webinar trick” won’t always work. But then he’ll have ideas for the next way to help people.

Ideas are the currency of the 21st century, and their value is inflating, not deflating.

Trend #2: Chemistry

The last 50 years was the “IT half-century,” starting with the invention of the computer, the widespread use of home computers, and then the domination of the Internet and mobile phones.

Okay. Done.

It’s not like innovation will stop in that area. It won’t. Every year computers will get better, more apps will be useful, etc. But the greatest innovations are over for now (DNA computing will happen, but not until after what I’m about to say does).

As an example: the next versions of my laptop and my cellphone have already come out. But, for the first time ever, I have no real need to get them. And I’m an upgrade addict.

But the upgrades just weren’t big enough.

I don’t even think I understand the differences between the next generation of cellphones and last year’s generation (tiny changes in battery and pixel numbers, but only tiny).

Here’s what’s going to change: chemistry. The number of grad students in chemistry is at an all-time low versus the number of grad students in computer science or information technology.

And yet, we’re at a point where almost everything we do requires advances in chemistry rather than IT.

For instance, Elon Musk is creating a billion-dollar factory to make batteries. Well, for Elon’s sake, wouldn’t it be better if we had a more efficient way to use lithium so that batteries can last longer?

DNA computing, while it would create a great advance in computer technology, is almost 100% dependent on advances in biochemistry.

Many people call the US the “Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas.” But what good does it do us if we can’t convert the gas into liquids that fill up our car?

Right now every country uses Fischer-Tropsch technology—a chemical process that is 90 years old—to turn gas into liquids. And it’s expensive to use it. Wouldn’t it be better if someone could develop a groundbreaking change here?

I can list 50 problems that chemistry can solve that would make the world better. But it’s not sexy, so people have stopped studying it. This will change.

Not because it’s a futurist trend, but because for 3,000 years, changes in society were largely due to chemistry advances (e.g., harvesting wheat) rather than computer advances. I’m just taking an old trend and saying, “Hey, don’t forget about it. We still need it.”

A simple example: DuPont and Dow Chemical, the two largest chemical companies, have had 50% and 38% year-over-year earnings growth respectively compared with Apple (12%). But nobody cares.

(Related: Find out the group of chemistry related stocks I think are ready to produce triple-digit gains for investors here)

Trend #3: Employee-free Society

Before 200 years ago, we never really had employees. Then there was the rise of corporatism, which many confused with capitalism.

I’m on the board of a $1 billion in revenue employment agency. It’s gone from $200 million in revenues to $1 billion just in the past few years. Why did we move up so fast when the economy has basically been flat?

For two reasons:

1. The Pareto principle, which says that 80% of the work is being done by 20% of the people. So a lot of people are being fired now, since 2009 gave everyone the carte blanche excuse.

2. Regulations that are too difficult to follow. It’s getting pretty difficult to figure out what you need to do with an employee. Health care is a great example, but there are 1,000 other examples.

So what’s happening, for better or worse, is a rising wave of solo-preneurs and lifestyle entrepreneurs—exactly what happened for the hundreds of years that capitalism was around before stiff and rigid corporatism (teamed with unions) became the primary but fake “stable” force in our lives.

This is why companies like Uber are flourishing. You have a workforce (the drivers), logistics software in the middle, and people willing to pay for that workforce.

Our GDP and our startups are going to start to drift in the Uber direction. Uber in San Francisco last month did three times as many rides as all the cab drivers in SF combined.

Corporate life was never really stable, and now we know that.

The problem is: while we were all in our cubicles (and I’ve been guilty of this for many years as well), we stopped being creative, stopped having ideas, and just took orders from the gatekeepers: bosses, colleagues, government, education, family.

We let other people choose what was best for us instead of doing the choosing ourselves. If you let someone else do the choosing for you, the results won’t be good, and you’ll get resentful. Bad things will happen.

I won’t give a direct tock tip on this right here, I do that every month in my Altucher Report. This is not about stocks. It’s about taking an approach where you get your life back so you can have wealth and abundance over the next 50 years.

One thing to try is to write down 10 ideas a day. This exercises the idea muscle and gets you 100x more creative than the average person over time.

They could be business ideas, ideas to help other businesses, book ideas, or even ideas to surprise your spouse. Another trick is to take Monday’s ideas and combine them with Tuesday’s ideas. “Idea sex” is an awesome source of creativity.

Ideas are the true currency of this next century. I don’t care about the dollar or gold or health care. Any movement in those will just create opportunities for people who know when to take advantage of them.

The key is to become an idea machine.

People say “ideas are a dime a dozen” or “execution is everything.” These statements are not really true. It’s difficult to come up with 10 new ideas a day (try it), and execution ideas are just a subset of ideas.

I was going to make this 10 trends I see coming over the next 10 years. But at 1,900 words, I already shared three solid ones. If you want to learn the other 7, I explain them in detail and how to make money off of them in my new book.

These trends are already here, they’re already deeply affecting our society, and being ready for them will be the key to success in the coming years.

Here’s how to be prepared. 

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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430152/abortion-roe-v-wade-unborn-children-women-feminism-march-life

When Abortion Suddenly Stopped Making Sense

January 22, 2016 4:00 AM  

At the time of the Roe v. Wade decision, I was a college student — an anti-war, mother-earth, feminist, hippie college student. That particular January I was taking a semester off, living in the D.C. area and volunteering at the feminist “underground newspaper” Off Our Backs. As you’d guess, I was strongly in favor of legalizing abortion. The bumper sticker on my car read, “Don’t labor under a misconception; legalize abortion.”

The first issue of Off Our Backs after the Roe decision included one of my movie reviews, and also an essay by another member of the collective criticizing the decision. It didn’t go far enough, she said, because it allowed states to restrict abortion in the third trimester. The Supreme Court should not meddle in what should be decided between the woman and her doctor. She should be able to choose abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.

But, at the time, we didn’t have much understanding of what abortion was. We knew nothing of fetal development. We consistently termed the fetus “a blob of tissue,” and that’s just how we pictured it — an undifferentiated mucous-like blob, not recognizable as human or even as alive. It would be another 15 years of so before pregnant couples could show off sonograms of their unborn babies, shocking us with the obvious humanity of the unborn.

We also thought, back then, that few abortions would ever be done. It’s a grim experience, going through an abortion, and we assumed a woman would choose one only as a last resort. We were fighting for that “last resort.” We had no idea how common the procedure would become; today, one in every five pregnancies ends in abortion.

Nor could we have imagined how high abortion numbers would climb. In the 43 years since Roe v. Wade, there have been 59 million abortions. It’s hard even to grasp a number that big. Twenty years ago, someone told me that, if the names of all those lost babies were inscribed on a wall, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the wall would have to stretch for 50 miles. It’s 20 years later now, and that wall would have to stretch twice as far. But no names could be written on it; those babies had no names.

We expected that abortion would be rare. What we didn’t realize was that, once abortion becomes available, it becomes the most attractive option for everyone around the pregnant woman. If she has an abortion, it’s like the pregnancy never existed. No one is inconvenienced. It doesn’t cause trouble for the father of the baby, or her boss, or the person in charge of her college scholarship. It won’t embarrass her mom and dad.

Abortion is like a funnel; it promises to solve all the problems at once. So there is significant pressure on a woman to choose abortion, rather than adoption or parenting.

A woman who had had an abortion told me, “Everyone around me was saying they would ‘be there for me’ if I had the abortion, but no one said they’d ‘be there for me’ if I had the baby.” For everyone around the pregnant woman, abortion looks like the sensible choice. A woman who determines instead to continue an unplanned pregnancy looks like she’s being foolishly stubborn. It’s like she’s taken up some unreasonable hobby. People think: If she would only go off and do this one thing, everything would be fine.

But that’s an illusion. Abortion can’t really turn back the clock. It can’t push the rewind button on life and make it so that she was never pregnant. It can make it easy for everyone around the woman to forget the pregnancy, but the woman herself may struggle. When she first sees the positive pregnancy test she may feel, in a panicky way, that she has to get rid of it as fast as possible. But life stretches on after abortion, for months and years — for many long nights — and all her life long she may ponder the irreversible choice she made.

Abortion can’t push the rewind button on life and make it so she was never pregnant. It can make it easy for everyone around the woman to forget the pregnancy, but the woman herself may struggle.

This issue gets presented as if it’s a tug of war between the woman and the baby. We see them as mortal enemies, locked in a fight to the death. But that’s a strange idea, isn’t it? It must be the first time in history when mothers and their own children have been assumed to be at war. We’re supposed to picture the child attacking her, trying to destroy her hopes and plans, and picture the woman grateful for the abortion, since it rescued her from the clutches of her child.

If you were in charge of a nature preserve and you noticed that the pregnant female mammals were trying to miscarry their pregnancies, eating poisonous plants or injuring themselves, what would you do? Would you think of it as a battle between the pregnant female and her unborn and find ways to help those pregnant animals miscarry? No, of course not. You would immediately think, “Something must be really wrong in this environment.” Something is creating intolerable stress, so much so that animals would rather destroy their own offspring than bring them into the world. You would strive to identify and correct whatever factors were causing this stress in the animals.

The same thing goes for the human animal. Abortion gets presented to us as if it’s something women want; both pro-choice and pro-life rhetoric can reinforce that idea. But women do this only if all their other options look worse. It’s supposed to be “her choice,” yet so many women say, “I really didn’t have a choice.”

I changed my opinion on abortion after I read an article in Esquire magazine, way back in 1976. I was home from grad school, flipping through my dad’s copy, and came across an article titled “What I Saw at the Abortion.” The author, Richard Selzer, was a surgeon, and he was in favor of abortion, but he’d never seen one. So he asked a colleague whether, next time, he could go along.

Selzer described seeing the patient, 19 weeks pregnant, lying on her back on the table. (That is unusually late; most abortions are done by the tenth or twelfth week.) The doctor performing the procedure inserted a syringe into the woman’s abdomen and injected her womb with a prostaglandin solution, which would bring on contractions and cause a miscarriage. (This method isn’t used anymore, because too often the baby survived the procedure — chemically burned and disfigured, but clinging to life. Newer methods, including those called “partial birth abortion” and “dismemberment abortion,” more reliably ensure death.)

After injecting the hormone into the patient’s womb, the doctor left the syringe standing upright on her belly. Then, Selzer wrote, “I see something other than what I expected here. . . . It is the hub of the needle that is in the woman’s belly that has jerked. First to one side. Then to the other side. Once more it wobbles, is tugged, like a fishing line nibbled by a sunfish.”

He realized he was seeing the fetus’s desperate fight for life. And as he watched, he saw the movement of the syringe slow down and then stop. The child was dead. Whatever else an unborn child does not have, he has one thing: a will to live. He will fight to defend his life.

The last words in Selzer’s essay are, “Whatever else is said in abortion’s defense, the vision of that other defense [i.e., of the child defending its life] will not vanish from my eyes. And it has happened that you cannot reason with me now. For what can language do against the truth of what I saw?”

The truth of what he saw disturbed me deeply. There I was, anti-war, anti–capital punishment, even vegetarian, and a firm believer that social justice cannot be won at the cost of violence. Well, this sure looked like violence. How had I agreed to make this hideous act the centerpiece of my feminism? How could I think it was wrong to execute homicidal criminals, wrong to shoot enemies in wartime, but all right to kill our own sons and daughters?

The truth of what he saw disturbed me deeply. There I was, anti-war, anti–capital punishment, even vegetarian, and a firm believer that social justice cannot be won at the cost of violence.

For that was another disturbing thought: Abortion means killing not strangers but our own children, our own flesh and blood. No matter who the father, every child aborted is that woman’s own son or daughter, just as much as any child she will ever bear.

We had somehow bought the idea that abortion was necessary if women were going to rise in their professions and compete in the marketplace with men. But how had we come to agree that we will sacrifice our children, as the price of getting ahead? When does a man ever have to choose between his career and the life of his child?

Once I recognized the inherent violence of abortion, none of the feminist arguments made sense. Like the claim that a fetus is not really a person because it is so small. Well, I’m only 5 foot 1. Women, in general, are smaller than men. Do we really want to advance a principle that big people have more value than small people? That if you catch them before they’ve reached a certain size, it’s all right to kill them?

What about the child who is “unwanted”? It was a basic premise of early feminism that women should not base their sense of worth on whether or not a man “wants” them. We are valuable simply because we are members of the human race, regardless of any other person’s approval. Do we really want to say that “unwanted” people might as well be dead? What about a woman who is “wanted” when she’s young and sexy but less so as she gets older? At what point is it all right to terminate her?

The usual justification for abortion is that the unborn is not a “person.” It’s said that “Nobody knows when life begins.” But that’s not true; everybody knows when life — a new individual human life — gets started. It’s when the sperm dissolves in the egg. That new single cell has a brand-new DNA, never before seen in the world. If you examined through a microscope three cells lined up — the newly fertilized ovum, a cell from the father, and a cell from the mother — you would say that, judging from the DNA, the cells came from three different people.

When people say the unborn is “not a person” or “not a life” they mean that it has not yet grown or gained abilities that arrive later in life. But there’s no agreement about which abilities should be determinative. Pro-choice people don’t even agree with each other. Obviously, law cannot be based on such subjective criteria. If it’s a case where the question is “Can I kill this?” the answer must be based on objective medical and scientific data. And the fact is, an unborn child, from the very first moment, is a new human individual. It has the three essential characteristics that make it “a human life”: It’s alive and growing, it is composed entirely of human cells, and it has unique DNA. It’s a person, just like the rest of us.

Abortion indisputably ends a human life. But this loss is usually set against the woman’s need to have an abortion in order to freely direct her own life. It is a particular cruelty to present abortion as something women want, something they demand, they find liberating. Because nobody wants this. The procedure itself is painful, humiliating, expensive — no woman “wants” to go through it. But once it’s available, it appears to be the logical, reasonable choice. All the complexities can be shoved down that funnel. Yes, abortion solves all the problems; but it solves them inside the woman’s body. And she is expected to keep that pain inside for a lifetime, and be grateful for the gift of abortion.

Many years ago I wrote something in an essay about abortion, and I was surprised that the line got picked up and frequently quoted. I’ve seen it in both pro-life and pro-choice contexts, so it appears to be something both sides agree on.

I wrote, “No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.”

Strange, isn’t it, that both pro-choice and pro-life people agree that is true? Abortion is a horrible and harrowing experience. That women choose it so frequently shows how much worse continuing a pregnancy can be. Essentially, we’ve agreed to surgically alter women so that they can get along in a man’s world. And then expect them to be grateful for it.

Nobody wants to have an abortion. And if nobody wants to have an abortion, why are women doing it, 2,800 times a day? If women doing something 2,800 times daily that they don’t want to do, this is not liberation we’ve won. We are colluding in a strange new form of oppression.

*     *     *

And so we come around to one more March for Life, like the one last year, like the one next year. Protesters understandably focus on the unborn child, because the danger it faces is the most galvanizing aspect of this struggle. If there are different degrees of injustice, surely violence is the worst manifestation, and killing worst of all. If there are different categories of innocent victim, surely the small and helpless have a higher claim to protection, and tiny babies the highest of all. The minimum purpose of government is to shield the weak from abuse by the strong, and there is no one weaker or more voiceless than unborn children. And so we keep saying that they should be protected, for all the same reasons that newborn babies are protected. Pro-lifers have been doing this for 43 years now, and will continue holding a candle in the darkness for as many more years as it takes.

I understand all the reasons why the movement’s prime attention is focused on the unborn. But we can also say that abortion is no bargain for women, either. It’s destructive and tragic. We shouldn’t listen unthinkingly to the other side of the time-worn script, the one that tells us that women want abortions, that abortion liberates them. Many a post-abortion woman could tell you a different story.

The pro-life cause is perennially unpopular, and pro-lifers get used to being misrepresented and wrongly accused. There are only a limited number of people who are going to be brave enough to stand up on the side of an unpopular cause. But sometimes a cause is so urgent, is so dramatically clear, that it’s worth it. What cause could be more outrageous than violence — fatal violence — against the most helpless members of our human community? If that doesn’t move us, how hard are our hearts? If that doesn’t move us, what will ever move us?

In time, it’s going to be impossible to deny that abortion is violence against children. Future generations, as they look back, are not necessarily going to go easy on ours. Our bland acceptance of abortion is not going to look like an understandable goof. In fact, the kind of hatred that people now level at Nazis and slave-owners may well fall upon our era. Future generations can accurately say, “It’s not like they didn’t know.” They can say, “After all, they had sonograms.” They may consider this bloodshed to be a form of genocide. They might judge our generation to be monsters.

One day, the tide is going to turn. With that Supreme Court decision 43 years ago, one of the sides in the abortion debate won the day. But sooner or later, that day will end. No generation can rule from the grave. The time is coming when a younger generation will sit in judgment of ours. And they are not obligated to be kind.

— Frederica Mathewes-Green is the author of Real Choices: Listening to Women; Looking for Alternatives to Abortion.

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https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201701/gaslighting-know-it-and-identify-it-protect-yourself

Gaslighting: Know It and Identify It to Protect Yourself

Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic used to gain power. And it works too well.

Gaslighting is a tactic of behavior in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality.  It works a lot better than you may think.  Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting.  It is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders.  It is done slowly, so the victim doesn't realize how much they've been brainwashed.  In the movie Gaslight (1944), a man manipulates his wife to the point where she thinks she is losing her mind. 

People that gaslight use the following techniques:  

1. They tell you blatant lies.

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You know it's an outright lie.  Yet they are telling you this lie with a straight face.  Why are they so blatant?  Because they're setting up a precedent.  Once they tell you a huge lie, you're not sure if anything they say is true.  Keeping you unsteady and off-kilter is the goal. 

2.  They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof. 

You know they said they would do something...you know you heard it.  But they out and out deny it.  It makes you start questioning your reality - maybe they never said that thing.  And the more they do this, the more you question your reality and start accepting theirs. 

3.  They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition. 

They know how important your kids are to you, they know how important your identity is to you.  So that is one of the first things they attack.  If you have kids, they tell you that you did a disservice by having those children.  They will tell you that if only you weren't _____________, you'd be a worthy person.  They attack the foundation of your being. 

4.  They wear you down over time.

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This is one of the insidious things about gaslighting - it is done gradually, over time. A lie here, a lie there, a snide comment every so often...and then it starts ramping up. Even the brightest, most self-aware people can be sucked into gaslighting - it is that effective.  It's the "frog in the frying pan" analogy - the heat is turned up slowly, so the frog never realizes what hit it. 

5. Their actions do not match their words.

When dealing with a person or entity that gaslights, look at what they are doing rather than what they are saying.  What they are saying means nothing.  It is just talk.  What they are doing is the issue. 

6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you. 

This person or entity that is cutting you down, telling you that you don't have value - is now praising you for something you did.  This adds an additional sense of uneasiness.  You think, "Well maybe they aren't so bad."  Yes, they are.  This is a calculated attempt to keep you off-kilter - and again, question your reality.  Also look at what you were praised for - it is probably something that served the gaslighter. 

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7.  They know confusion weakens people. 

Gaslighters know that all people like having a sense of stability and normalcy.  Their goal is to uproot this and make you constantly question everything.  And humans' natural tendency is to look to the person or entity that will help you feel more stable - and that happens to be the gaslighter.  

8.  They project.

They are a drug user or a cheater - yet they are constantly accusing you of that.  This is done so repetitively that you start trying to defend yourself - and are distracted from the gaslighter's own behavior. 

9.  They try to align people against you.

Gaslighters are masters at manipulating and finding the people they know will stand by them no matter what - and they use these people against you.  They will make comments such as "____________ knows that you're not right", or "___________ knows you're useless too".   Keep in mind it does not mean that these people actually said these things.  The gaslighter is a constant liar.  When the gaslighter uses this tactic it makes you feel like you don't know who to trust or turn to - and that leads you right back to the gaslighter.  And that's exactly what the want.  Isolation gives them more control.  

10.  They tell you or others that you are crazy.

This is one of the most effective tools of the gaslighter - because it's dismissive.  The gaslighter knows if they question your sanity, people will not believe you when you tell them the gaslighter is abusive or out-of-control.  It's a master technique.  

11.  They tell you everyone else is a liar.

By telling you that everyone else (your family, the media) is a liar, it again makes you question your reality.  You've never known someone with the audacity to do this, so they must be right, right?  No.  It's a manipulation technique.  It makes people turn more to the gaslighter for the "correct" information - which isn't correct information at all.

The more you are aware of these techniques, the quicker you can identify them before you fall into the gaslighter's trap.  

Copyright 2017 Sarkis Media 

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https://www.houselogic.com/organize-maintain/cleaning-decluttering/clutter-depression/

The Link Between Clutter and Depression

It’s been proven. Clutter is a bummer — literally.

Image: Aleksandra Kovac/Stocksy United

Dishes in the sink, toys throughout the house, stuff covering every flat surface; this clutter not only makes our homes look bad, it makes us feel bad, too.

At least that’s what researchers at UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives and Families (CELF) discovered when they explored in real time the relationship between 32 California families and the thousands of objects in their homes. The resulting book, “Life at Home in The Twenty-First Century,” is a rare look at how middle-class Americans use the space in their homes and interact with the things they accumulate over a lifetime.

Our over-worked closets are overflowing with things we rarely touch.

Related: Tiny Change, Big Impact: Organize a Small Closet in a Weekend (video)

It turns out that clutter has a profound affect on our mood and self-esteem. CELF’s anthropologists, social scientists, and archaeologists found:

• A link between high cortisol (stress hormone) levels in female home owners and a high density of household objects.The more stuff, the more stress women feel. Men, on the other hand, don’t seem bothered by mess, which accounts for tensions between tidy wives and their clutter bug hubbies.
• Women associate a tidy home with a happy and successful family. The more dishes that pile up in the sink, the more anxious women feel.
• Even families that want to reduce clutter often are emotionally paralyzed when it comes to sorting and pitching objects. They either can’t break sentimental attachments to objects or believe their things have hidden monetary value.

Related: How to Get Rid of Stuff and Declutter Your Life

• Although U.S. consumers bear only 3% of the world’s children, we buy 40% of the world’s toys.And these toys live in every room, fighting for display space with kids’ trophies, artwork, and snapshots of their last soccer game.

Although “Life At Home” documents the clutter problem, the book offers no solutions. But there are some simple things you can do to de-clutter your home and raise your spirits.

1. Adopt the Rule of Five

Every time you get up from your desk or walk through a room, put away five things. Or, each hour, devote five minutes to de-cluttering. At the end of the day, you’ve cleaned for an hour.

2. Be Ruthless About Your Kitchen Sink

Pledge to clear and clean your kitchen sink every day. It takes a couple of seconds more to place a dish in the dishwasher than dump it in the sink. A clean sink will instantly raise your spirits and decrease your anxiety.

3. Put Photos Away

Return to yesteryear when only photos of ancestors or weddings earned a place. Put snapshots in a family album, which will immediately de-clutter many flat surfaces.

4. Unburden Your Refrigerator Door

Researchers found a correlation between the number of items stuck to the fridge door and the amount of clutter throughout the house. Toss extra magnets, file restaurant menus, and place calendars in less conspicuous places.

Related: How to Organize Your Fridge So You Never Waste Food Again

5. Hack out Unexpected Storage Space

You won’t believe all the places you can squirrel away your stuff.

Related: 7 Storage Solutions You Didn’t Know You Had

6. Get Inspired

We found these creative de-cluttering ideas on Pinterest.

7. Test Whether You'll Miss It

Fill a box with items you don’t love or use. Seal the box and place it in a closet. If you haven’t opened the box in a year, donate it (unopened!) to charity.

Related: Re-Use Old Stuff to Create New Storage

Lisa Kaplan Gordon

is an avid gardener, a member of the Fairfax County Master Gardeners Association, and a builder of luxury homes in McLean, Va. She’s been a Homes editor for Gannett News Service and has reviewed home improvement products for AOL. Follow Lisa on Google+.

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http://theresurgent.com/same-excuses-for-this-stain-on-the-constitution/

Same Excuses for This Stain on the Constitution.

Erick Erickson

“It is my property.” “It is not human.” “It is not even three-fifths of a person.” “I can do with my property whatever I want.” “You have no legal right to control my property.” “Science says it is not an intelligent being.” “It cannot survive on its own. It is mine to do with as I please.” “It cannot feel anything.”

Those were the excuses offered up by slave owners before the Civil War. They refused to see humanity in slaves. They refused to acknowledge they had dignity and even life. They were viewed as sub-human. Slave owners and the segregationists after them concocted pseudo-science to try to convince people that the slave was incapable of intelligence, feeling, or freedom. They bought and sold them. They broke up families. They even argued it would be cruel to slaves to free them.

One hundred fifty-two years after our nation enacted the thirteenth amendment prohibiting slavery the same excuses used to justify slavery are now used by those who would defend abortion. “Property” has become “body,” but otherwise the same arguments are used to deny humanity to humans in order to treat them as less than human. Modern America has just graduated from the trading of bodies to the trading of body parts.

Recounting the popular advice in ancient Rome, Jerry Toner of the University of Cambridge noted Romans of the day advised, “Giving birth to many children does not mean you should keep them all. If you are poor and do not earn enough to be able to support your family, you should throw away weak infants at birth. A child does not become a full human being until the eighth or ninth day when the father has accepted it into his household.…So if your wife does produce an unwanted child, you should instruct her to abandon it at the town dump or by the roadside so the slave-dealers can pick it up.”

Christians were declared enemies of humanity by Roman emperors because, in part, they would collect the discarded babies from the town dump and raise them as their own. Likewise, they would refuse abortions. Two thousand years later it was Christians who took up the cause of abolition and now Christians again seek the abolition of the newest stain on our constitution. As an aside, it is worth noting that Christians have been opposed to abortion consistently for two thousand years. Good luck trying to change their sexual ethic.

There are now American politicians and pro-abortion activists who have publicly supported the idea of the right to an abortion until the moment a mother leaves the hospital with her child. The Romans would recognize those Americans. The pagan disciples of Moloch who made child sacrifices for good harvests would recognize those who champion abortion as a means to fight climate change and increased carbon footprints.

In Washington this weekend, though they will not get the same attention in the media that the Women’s March got last week, hundreds of thousands of Americans will march for life. They will pray for hearts and minds to be changed, and they will pray for an end to Roe v. Wade, a judicial opinion even pro-abortion Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has acknowledged was premised on sloppy reasoning going too far and too fast. And they will pray for the thirteen children aborted in America in the five minutes it took you to read this column and the other 3,687 who will be aborted today.

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http://christianindex.org/truett-mcconnell-vice-president-pens-open-letter-to-president-trump/

Truett McConnell vice president pens open letter to President Trump

christianindex

Truett McConnell vice president pens open letter to President Trump

President Trump:

First let me say thank you! Thank you for keeping your word. Thank you for the cabinet appointments. Thank you for your vice-presidential selection. Thank you for your time and service! I am sincerely grateful you gave up so much to serve our country!

Fellow Christians maligned many of us, who voted for you. We were told that we were compromising our faith, Biblical standards, and a Christian worldview. We responded to such comments with vigor; taking you at your word about pro-life, religious liberty, and Biblical values. We didn’t defend your past, any more than we defended our pasts. We admitted you were a sinner, as are we all. We admonished our brothers/sisters not to judge you by your past; we admonished them of the importance of religious liberty and life for everyone; we admonished them that no nominee is perfect, as we are all sinners. In so doing, we were told that we were blind; that we would blindly follow whomever the GOP nominated; that you were secretly a liberal, etc.

When such rhetoric didn’t work, we were then told we were supporting a sexual predator and sexual assaulter. Again, we tried to explain to our brothers/sisters that we don’t take what CNN or NY Times says as gospel truth; that just because the democrats find women who would accuse you of such (during a heated election) does not make it so; that a comment made years ago (however inappropriate it was) about what women allowed you to do, does not make you a sexual assaulter; that if your wife forgave you then perhaps “Christians” should as well.

Our vocal defense is why I say Thank You! We didn’t, nor do we now, know you; but we chose to trust you. I, personally, want to thank you for keeping our trust and vindicating our choice. I implore you to continue to do so with your court nominees.

Further, if I could offer you any advice, as my President, it would be: Please continue to use your Twitter account to bypass the liberal media, but perhaps at times the tone could be modified. The content is dead on! But how you say it, perhaps, could be more gentle and humble (both of which God honors).  President Obama had an incredible ability of saying things, which were contrary to a Christian worldview (and thus errant) in a way that sounded both honorable and believable. He was the epitome of symbolism over substance.

You, on the other hand, “tell it like it is.” You are incredibly forthright, and your words are substantial; however, the tone turns some off. Perhaps combining President Obama’s strength in this area with yours could prove wise.

Please know that many of us Christians place our loyalty in our Creator, not in our Country; in our God, not in our government; in our Lord, not in our laws; and in our Savior, not in our society. As such, we will be vocal about our support of you, without fear, as I am today, when we feel you are leading in such a way that affirms a Christian worldview, but we will also be vocal, without fear, when we feel you are not.

Finally, please know I will faithfully pray for you. I will pray for wisdom from God. I will pray that you seek such (for if you do, you will find it). I will pray if anyone in your family has not come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ that he/she will (even as I pray such for my family). I will pray for your protection, both spiritually and physically. I will pray that the blessings from heaven will fall on you and your family, as well as this country, as you follow God and His Word.

Dr. Brad Reynolds
Vice President for Academic Affairs, Professor of Christian Studies
Truett McConnell University
Cleveland, Georgia

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http://ijr.com/wildfire/2017/01/781283-dennis-millers-rant-on-trump-inauguration-nails-exactly-why-president-should-never-stop-tweeting/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=owned&utm_campaign=ods&utm_term=ijamerica&utm_content=media

Dennis Miller's Rant on Trump Inauguration Nails Exactly Why President Should Never. Stop. Tweeting.

Comedian and former radio host Dennis Miller was on the “O'Reilly Factor” to share his observations on the political climate ahead of the Trump Inauguration.

After being asked about the left seeking with all its might to delegitimize the election in the incoming presidency, Miller responded:

He hasn't even had a success yet. If he gets successful, can you imagine how crazy it's gonna get then? If I was Trump, I would use my head, I would continue tweeting, because they're going to tell lies about him ten times a day... and if he has to come in and use Twitter as the Ben Bradley red pencil, and say, “this is wrong, get better information,” I would hope he does it.

Miller continued on about Obama's role in the partisanship:

This country has never been more polarized. Now, Barack Obama is going to move on from this and say, 'wasn't my fault.' Yeah, it was. You seem like a pretty nice guy, but you're leaving a pretty big nasty wake behind you, Mr. President. The country's polarized—and that's on you.

The comedian goes on to give Hilary Clinton kudos for showing up at the Inauguration, then got in some ribbing of the celebrities who refuse to show.

Classic Dennis.

Editor's note: The transcript was corrected after publication.

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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443939/betsy-devos-christianity-school-choice-opponents-phony-panic

The ‘Scary Christian’ School-Choice Panic Is upon Us

January 18, 2017 4:00 AM  

My childhood in Western Michigan was rather ordinary, I suppose.

Together with my Dutch-imported family, I’d gather on weekends at the local Christian Reformed Church, eating piles of imported Voortman wafer cookies while plotting how to best install a theocracy in our unsuspecting Midwestern state.

During the week, at my Christian high school, we’d secretly boil a big pot of oliebollen — traditional Dutch donuts that, to be honest, aren’t as good as regular donuts — and cook up a menu of ideas to destroy the American education system.

In our free time, we’d do our best to enforce repressive and arbitrary laws in our small, idyllic, and largely Dutch town, marching in lockstep as we aimlessly purchased windmill-shaped tchotchkes and engaged in the occasional public shaming. The tallest tulip, after all, always gets cut!

I kid, I kid. But if you read the panicked media coverage of Betsy DeVos, the Christian Michigander nominated to be our nation’s next education secretary, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is how things shake out daily in America’s Calvinist Dutch heartland.

“Betsy DeVos Wants to Use America’s Schools to Build ‘God’s Kingdom,’” bellowed Mother Jones yesterday. DeVos, a “socially conservative Christian,” represents “the worst of the school choice movement,” declared The New Republic. Because of her conservative Christianity, DeVos is a “religious zealot” and “doesn’t belong in a government job in which separation of church and state is crucial,” huffed the Huffington Post.

In case it’s never happened to you, it’s both amusing and illuminating to see your childhood home inflated into a quietly sinister and exotic locale. The wide-eyed Mother Jones reporter leads her story with a list of Holland, Michigan’s draconian rules — Grass clippings must be picked up! Fences must be maintained! — while failing to mention, say, Los Angeles’s recently overturned beach-Frisbee ban or the existing high-heel ban in California’s Carmel-by-the-Sea.

An analysis from Newsweek, meanwhile — subtly entitled “Betsy DeVos Is Coming for Your Public Schools” — examines the conservative Calvin College, DeVos’s alma mater, like a newly discovered, mysteriously abandoned, alien time machine: “Any attempt to forecast what DeVos might do as the nation’s education secretary must begin here, at this college of 4,000 that bids its students to act as ‘Christ’s agents of renewal in the world.’” Oh dear! What could this terrifying credo possibly inspire students to do?

If the horror show surrounding DeVos’s nomination is any indication, there’s a lot at stake in the school-choice wars.

In DeVos’s case, it may have inspired her to donate millions upon millions of dollars to charitable causes, including health care, the arts, and, yes, school choice.

DeVos has long supported charter schools and vouchers, which would indeed shake up the public-school system as we know it, allowing parents to send their children to schools beyond the confines of their district or zip code — confines that are currently dictated by how much money a family has to spend on a house in the “right” neighborhood. In this government-sponsored stacking of the deck, rich kids almost always win, and poor kids often lose.

For those who wail about the separation of church and state — an argument often aimed at vouchers or, to a lesser extent, education tax credits, which can be used to pay for private or religious schools — it’s worth pointing out that we’re talking about the taxpayers’ own money. This money is helpfully taken by the state, wound through the system, skimmed off the top, and then returned at a lower rate. It’s also worth pointing out that widespread school choice — and the ability of parents to send their children to schools that echo their religious or personal beliefs — would defuse many of the child-related culture wars wreaking havoc today.

Alas, school choice is scary stuff, especially for those entrenched in the current system. In this realm, DeVos’s Christianity isn’t the only tool used to whip up alarm. “The best argument against Betsy DeVos can be made with a single word,” Newsweek opined. “Detroit.” The Motor City, as the narrative goes, is plagued with failing schools, and school choice has simply made them worse.

That’s certainly news to many in Detroit. “DeVos is a sound choice, and would strive to improve education for all kids,” the Detroit News editorial board wrote on January 12, cautioning against “the hysteria surrounding the West Michigan native, fanned by teachers unions.” As the Wall Street Journal pointed out over the weekend, “Charter students in Detroit on average score 60% more proficient on state tests than kids attending the city’s traditional public schools. Eighteen of the top 25 schools in Detroit are charters while 23 of the bottom 25 are traditional schools.” Oh.

If the horror show surrounding DeVos’s nomination is any indication, there’s a lot at stake in the school-choice wars. But when it comes down to it, for most people, failing or unjust schools are a heck of a lot scarier than devout Christians with a penchant for charitable giving. When it comes to expanding educational opportunities, simply shouting “The Christians are coming! The Christians are coming!” probably isn’t going to fly. Let’s hope it doesn’t.

— Heather Wilhelm is a National Review columnist and a senior contributor to the Federalist.

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