Apostle Islands National Lakeshore’s protected bays, pristine…

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore’s protected bays, pristine beaches and natural beauty provide outstanding water recreation. Public docks are found on 12 of the islands in the Wisconsin national lakeshore, and visitors can explore this area of Lake Superior by boat, kayak or canoe. Use safe boating practices and you’ll enjoy fun times and stunning scenery. Photo by Jasmine Wilhelm (http://ift.tt/18oFfjl).

Modern Residence in Thailand designed by Julsamano Bhongsatiern

This modern residence, an example of design in a very tropical climate country, is located in a residential area of Khet Suan Luang, Krung Thep Maha Nakhon (Bangkok), Thailand. It was designed by the architectural firm Julsamano Bhongsatiern in the year 2017 and covers a ground area of 1100 square meters. The process to build a modern architecture in this particular area had to deal not only with from, not..

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4 Investment Tips to Protect Your Future

Almost everything in our daily life revolves around money. We go to work to earn money and we use that money to pay for food, gas, our homes and all our necessities. It can seem like a never-ending cycle, especially if you are still trying to establish yourself.

However, there are some smart financial choices that you can make that will allow you to make money from your money without having to do much at all. Investing your money carefully can help you increase your income substantially with only a little oversight on your part.

There are a variety of methods that you can utilize to see a good return on your money. You should make sure that you consider what is best for you and your finances before making any major decisions.

Here are a few things that you should consider before looking for the best investment ideas.

Pay Off Your Debt

If you want your investments to succeed, you need to be making smart choices in all of your financial affairs. No matter how well you invest your money, if you are spending more than you can pay back, you are going to lose money.

Debt has a nasty way of catching up to us when we least expect it, and it is never forgiving. It would be very difficult to finally start seeing a return on your investment and then have to use all of that and more to pay off debts that you have incurred.

Additionally, no matter how well you invest, there is no guarantee that your investment will be successful. You might get a lot of money, you might only get a little or you could lose your money. Spending more than you have in anticipation of receiving money from your investments could come back to haunt you.

You could also lose your investments if you have to declare bankruptcy before you see returns. If you do end up in this position, talk to a legal professional about filing for bankruptcy to see if there is a way to protect your investments.

See Also: Staying Out Of Debt: 3 Money Habits You Should Be Doing

Keep Track of Your Money

keeping track of money

While it might not take a lot of work, taking the time to keep track of your money is one of the most important things that you can do. Knowing where you are spending and how that money is doing will help you understand how to best manage your investments.

Gone are the days when you can keep track of everything in a notebook or on a piece of paper unless you are a financial wizard. Find a software program or spreadsheet that fits your needs and use that to keep track of your income, your expenses and your investments.

It is important that you keep your records up to date and that you regularly review how your investments are performing. Find a schedule that works for you, but make sure that you are reviewing this information at least once a month.

Buy Low

buying low

This may seem like an obvious piece of advice, but it is repeated often for a reason. If you are investing in a company, it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of money on stock in a moderately successful company when you could spend a little money on a company that is growing.

If you manage to find and invest in a company that is newer but growing strong, then you have a pretty decent chance of making a lot of money off of your investment. It may be helpful to look at companies that have had financial troubles recently but are doing well again. Their growth reassures you that your investment is sound.

Consider Mutual Funds

Mutual funds are probably one of the best and easiest investments for new investors. When investing, the more diverse your portfolio is (or the more variety you have in types of investments), the better chance you have of getting a good return on your money.

Mutual funds can provide you with a diverse portfolio with professional management. There are also many variations of mutual funds to best meet your particular needs. Make sure that you choose someone that you trust to manage your mutual fund.

See Also: 7 Common Money Mistakes to Avoid (And their easy Solution)

Wrap Up

Every investor wants to earn high returns, but that always isn’t possible. Immerse yourself in financial markets and literature well before you decide to invest or before you put all your money in your best investment ideas. Talk to a financial adviser to make sure that you are aware of what you are getting into.

It’s easy to get taken advantage of if you don’t know much about investing, not to mention fail to gain money on your investments.

 

The post 4 Investment Tips to Protect Your Future appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

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Fantastic Pavilion in Milan, Italy Designed by MAIO Arquitects

In 2017, MAIO Arquitects created this marvelous design which forms part of a project defined by a set of geometric elements that can be freely assembled and recombined. A set of simple geometric frames allows an infinity of possibilities and spatial reconfigurations as well as using different finishes, textures and colors. The system, consisting of 5 basic elements, allows to create reusable, self-supporting and simple-to-build structures. It is located in..

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Heretics!: The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy

Say you went to college. Furthermore, say you went to a college that required you to take a two-year ride through Contemporary Civilization, or Philosophy I and II, or The World According to Dead White Men. They were called survey courses, but they didn’t simply scan the horizon from a comfortable distance — two years with a gin-and-tonic in an Adirondack chair. They were more like two years of what aspirants to enter the Navy SEALs only have to endure for seven days: Hell Week. Many students fell mortally wounded on the punji sticks of Gottfried Leibniz’s sentences; Bento Spinoza did his best to slaughter the survivors. Still, you look back on those years fondly, upon the few weeks when you covered Renaissance philosophy and were asked to read Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Discourse on Method, Leviathan, Pascal’s Pensées, Spinoza’s Ethics, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and, if you were lucky, Novum Organum and The Principia. Right. Fondly.

Enter Steven and Ben Nadler’s slenderized and tenderized intro to Renaissance philosophy by way of comics: Heretics! For those of us who hope to revive in memory what our liberal arts educations were supposed to leave us with for life, it is with pleasure that I can say that Nadler père, a professor of philosophy and humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Nadler fils, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, have collaborated on a fine formula in which the narrative zip (and overall entertainment value) of the cartoon format lend critical aid to the project of introducing — or reintroducing — readers to philosophy’s revolutionary era. Steven deciphers many of the big ideas of the gentlemen named above, plus, glory be, a woman: Princess Palantine Elisabeth of Bohemia, who may have influenced Nicolas Malebranche, Henry More, Descartes, and Leibniz in ways untold. His work is epigrammatic, but not without polychrome and humor. He has employed the header of most panels to set the scene: political, historical, philosophical. The panel itself serves many purposes: to enlarge upon an idea, to poke fun at some dullard, to convey the excitement of unearthing something wholly new.

Although not strictly chronological, the story has both forward motion and specific gravity: the panels smoothing transition one to the next, building on ideas, introducing counterarguments, hitting high notes: Galileo on sun spots, the Transit of Venus, the movement of the moons of Jupiter; Descartes searching for a “body of knowledge that had the same degree of certainty as the truths of mathematics” (and his wonderful mindbender: “How can I know that I can know if I don’t know what it is to know?” which Steven deconstructs); the extension of Hobbes’s materialism: “Our ideas, our sense perceptions, our feelings, our imaginings, our volitions — they are all just motions in the body”; Viscountess Conway swerving uncannily close to today’s creationists; Locke’s appreciation that we have laws even in the state of nature; Spinoza’s struggle with passion and reason; Hobbes trying to reconcile popular consent with absolute sovereignty. What makes the lacunae acceptable — other than this being a short, graphic history — is that Steven is the kind of teacher who would make a good scoutmaster: he knows how to kindle a fire from unlikely sources. You want to keep building this flicker into something transformative; not a sea of flames, but a light by which to expand your worldview.

Ben is a natty, amiable cartoonist. His characters strike the right emotional response — I couldn’t help it that many reminded me of a weird old friend, Carl Anderson’s character Henry — and Ben gives the story heft and movement with an easy use of guiding gutters between panels and full-page splashes. What takes the cake is his choice of colors. They have an antique quality — pale rose, madder, lake, ocher, sienna — well in keeping with the seventeenth century. Princeton has invested serious resources on the book. The paper is as weighty and tactile as card stock, and the design and construction feel like a fancy car.

The book provides much in the way of where, how, and when, and even, for its limited introduction, aspects of why. Why this blossoming of radical thought, this turning on its head of received opinion; why this faith in the raw science of the familiar, and this lack of faith in religious authorities? This was revolutionary thinking. This thinking was — ready for it? — heretical. Giordano Bruno was sentenced to death by burning in 1600 for his heliocentric views (insubordination didn’t help his case). Here we see thinking’s heavy lifting being done at peril — thinking as elemental as the periodic table. And we are given that friendly nudge to familiarize ourselves with these people, not only to grasp how we arrived at our way of comprehending and being in the world, but to keep on questioning.

The post Heretics!: The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy appeared first on The Barnes & Noble Review.

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August 9th

Life is like a prism. What you see depends on how you turn the glass.

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Why You Need to Start Floating

You’re reading Why You Need to Start Floating, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Whether we’re aware of it or not, we’re often being pulled by something – either a feeling of general anxiety, flashes from the past, or hopes for the future.
Most of us have become so used to this state of being, that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to live without this underlying sense of worry.

Floating in a pool of magnesium-saturated water, inside a large car-sized tank, untethered from the world – sounds, sights, subdued – could be one of your pathways to peace.

“The irony of sensory deprivation tanks is that in order to think outside the box, you must first go inside one.” ― Ryan Lilly

Most of us don’t manage our stress well

Reading a spiritual book can help us see new sides to life. Meditation can help us achieve a state of presence. But the benefits of these experiences are subtle; compounding over a longer period.

The commonly idolised quick-fix doesn’t seem to exist when it comes to having peace of mind. And the truth is, it doesn’t. It takes patience, a growth mindset, and self-awareness to better our internal states.

But after experiencing floatation, I can safely say that it might be one of the most compelling modern day tools to shift our perspectives for the better, helping us see our problems and blind spots in a new light.

The modern world has too much noise

The modern world is full of distractions, and with that comes a never ending bombardment of hyper-stimulation. All of this internal and external noise, compounded by the endless list of tasks we have on our minds, can often take up a significant chunk of our lives. If we don’t manage this noise, we can slowly get swept away by it.

There are endless examples of people who’ve had wealth and fame, and yet are still desperately unhappy. In essence, we can’t enjoy the ride of life, and achieve what we want, if we’re constantly at the mercy of our emotions and inner struggles. That’s where floatation can help. It allows us to see ourselves, and the world, with a little more objectivity; enabling us to experience peace of mind and a greater sense of clarity.

My first glimpse into floatation

Once I was finally in the tank for the first time, I found myself moving around a little more than I would’ve liked. I tried my best to relax my breathing, but I was almost trying too hard – and I got a glimpse into just how chaotic my inner world was.

Yet slowly, I adjusted.

My thoughts slowed down, as I let go a little more. Looking back at that first float now, though, I feel as if I didn’t completely relax. Regardless, my experience after leaving the tank was remarkable. The world seemed 5% brighter, and my body was a little lighter and freer.

A lot of the things that were stilted inside me had unravelled.

I smiled a bit more and began to realise just how much internal baggage I was holding onto. In that respect, my first float was incredibly liberating.

Why it may take more than once to experience the benefit

On my second visit, I was quickly able to let go more effectively, and went into a deeper state of relaxation and peace – partly, also, because I was more comfortable with my surroundings. Messages from my intuition floated in and out of my mind, and I stepped out of the tank with an almost Morpheus like sense-of-knowing.

Imagine how beautifully empowering that felt.

Because of the greater benefit I experienced from the second session; it’s fair to say that floating is just like anything else – you get better at it the more you practice it.

Why I still float

Floating allows you to access another part of your consciousness – one that’s only available during certain conditions. However esoteric that might sound, how often do we take the time to be present with ourselves?

The truth is, not often.

To this day, I continue to float, and I keep learning more about myself each time I go…

If you work on a PC and you’re interested in learning how to improve the way you live your week, read my free book on Spiritual Productivity.

  • You’ll learn about how to split up your day into four chunks, so you worry less about external influences.
  • You’ll learn about the ‘Playful Time’ technique and other small hacks that will take your productive work on the PC to the next level.
  • And much more…

 Samy Felice is a writer who brings meaning to words. His Free Book explores how to make success easier. 

You’ve read Why You Need to Start Floating, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

http://ift.tt/2wG86mh

Why You Need to Start Floating

You’re reading Why You Need to Start Floating, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Whether we’re aware of it or not, we’re often being pulled by something – either a feeling of general anxiety, flashes from the past, or hopes for the future.
Most of us have become so used to this state of being, that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to live without this underlying sense of worry.

Floating in a pool of magnesium-saturated water, inside a large car-sized tank, untethered from the world – sounds, sights, subdued – could be one of your pathways to peace.

“The irony of sensory deprivation tanks is that in order to think outside the box, you must first go inside one.” ― Ryan Lilly

Most of us don’t manage our stress well

Reading a spiritual book can help us see new sides to life. Meditation can help us achieve a state of presence. But the benefits of these experiences are subtle; compounding over a longer period.

The commonly idolised quick-fix doesn’t seem to exist when it comes to having peace of mind. And the truth is, it doesn’t. It takes patience, a growth mindset, and self-awareness to better our internal states.

But after experiencing floatation, I can safely say that it might be one of the most compelling modern day tools to shift our perspectives for the better, helping us see our problems and blind spots in a new light.

The modern world has too much noise

The modern world is full of distractions, and with that comes a never ending bombardment of hyper-stimulation. All of this internal and external noise, compounded by the endless list of tasks we have on our minds, can often take up a significant chunk of our lives. If we don’t manage this noise, we can slowly get swept away by it.

There are endless examples of people who’ve had wealth and fame, and yet are still desperately unhappy. In essence, we can’t enjoy the ride of life, and achieve what we want, if we’re constantly at the mercy of our emotions and inner struggles. That’s where floatation can help. It allows us to see ourselves, and the world, with a little more objectivity; enabling us to experience peace of mind and a greater sense of clarity.

My first glimpse into floatation

Once I was finally in the tank for the first time, I found myself moving around a little more than I would’ve liked. I tried my best to relax my breathing, but I was almost trying too hard – and I got a glimpse into just how chaotic my inner world was.

Yet slowly, I adjusted.

My thoughts slowed down, as I let go a little more. Looking back at that first float now, though, I feel as if I didn’t completely relax. Regardless, my experience after leaving the tank was remarkable. The world seemed 5% brighter, and my body was a little lighter and freer.

A lot of the things that were stilted inside me had unravelled.

I smiled a bit more and began to realise just how much internal baggage I was holding onto. In that respect, my first float was incredibly liberating.

Why it may take more than once to experience the benefit

On my second visit, I was quickly able to let go more effectively, and went into a deeper state of relaxation and peace – partly, also, because I was more comfortable with my surroundings. Messages from my intuition floated in and out of my mind, and I stepped out of the tank with an almost Morpheus like sense-of-knowing.

Imagine how beautifully empowering that felt.

Because of the greater benefit I experienced from the second session; it’s fair to say that floating is just like anything else – you get better at it the more you practice it.

Why I still float

Floating allows you to access another part of your consciousness – one that’s only available during certain conditions. However esoteric that might sound, how often do we take the time to be present with ourselves?

The truth is, not often.

To this day, I continue to float, and I keep learning more about myself each time I go…

If you work on a PC and you’re interested in learning how to improve the way you live your week, read my free book on Spiritual Productivity.

  • You’ll learn about how to split up your day into four chunks, so you worry less about external influences.
  • You’ll learn about the ‘Playful Time’ technique and other small hacks that will take your productive work on the PC to the next level.
  • And much more…

 Samy Felice is a writer who brings meaning to words. His Free Book explores how to make success easier. 

You’ve read Why You Need to Start Floating, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

http://ift.tt/2wG86mh

Wagner on Trial

In Barrie Kosky’s new production of Die Meistersinger, which opened the 2017 Bayreuth Festival, the musical cobbler Hans Sachs has been restyled as his creator Richard Wagner, isolated in the witness box at the Nuremberg Trials, and we the audience have now become the tribunal, passing judgment on him. Sachs, singing of German art, seems to be desperately pleading for absolution after the vicious ways in which German high culture—and especially Wagner’s music—was harnessed to the ideology of Nazism.

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Fools, Cowards, or Criminals?

Marcel Ophuls does not dilute the monstrosity of Nazi crimes at all. But he refuses to simply regard the perpetrators as monsters. “Belief in the Nazis as monsters,” he once said, “is a form of complacency.” This reminds me of something the controversial German novelist Martin Walser once said about the Auschwitz trials held in Frankfurt in the 1960s. He wasn’t against them. But he argued that the daily horror stories in the popular German press about the grotesque tortures inflicted by Nazi butchers made it easier for ordinary Germans to distance themselves from these crimes and the regime that made them happen. Who could possibly identify with such brutes? If only monsters were responsible for the Holocaust and other mass murders, there would never be any need for the rest of us to look in the mirror.

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