From: SandraXXXXX@AOL.comSent: Wednesday, Feb 10, 2021 12:00 PMSubject: Commercial Best home services commercial is very bad. “a neighborhood that smells like sausage.” Not funny at All. You need to remove that commercial. It sure did turn me off. Sent from my iPhone When an email reader at BEST HOME SERVICES received that complaint, they forwarded […]

Mick’s campaigns always get attention. BIG attention. Notice how he uses 25 seconds of this 30-second ad to set up the pivotal, all-important line: “… you call Best Home Services. They always have 4 trucks standing-by, waiting for last-minute calls.” Part of getting BIG attention is getting snarky complaints from people who believe their special […]

“Joy is always a function of gratitude —  and gratitude is always a function of perspective.” – Ann Voskamp

https://youtu.be/-F0yhz7y_gs?t=4

Prior to Covid, the Gross Domestic Product of Jamaica was about $16 billion per year. The tourism industry provides about one-fourth of all jobs in Jamaica. In recent years, Jamaica has become a regional leader in Information Technology Export Services (ITES). As the largest English speaking territory in the Caribbean, Jamaica has more than 30 companies operating […]

Hot Country, Cold Sport. Contrary to my assumptions, they didn’t do it because they thought it would be funny. Four members of the Jamaica Defense Force did it as a statement of pride and determination. Dudley Stokes, Devon Harris, Michael White and Caswell Allen traveled from their tropical island to snowy Canada hoping to make it into the […]

Only 2 chapters left! This chapter is the beginning of the big, sad, optimistic, New Orleans ending. Can you believe we started this book 33 weeks ago? If you want to go back and refresh your memories of the earlier chapters, this is your ticket to get there. – Indy Beagle

Cassidy Kate: age 5, chose Atlanta to see Giant Pandas (she was disappointed in their relatively diminutive size) age 10, chose Hershey, PA for one obvious reason. age 15, a wild Northwest driving tour from Chicago to Washington state taking her brother along. Samuel Byron: age 5, chose Boston to eat fish and go to […]

by Wizard of Ads Partner Dave Young I’m in a local networking group and the question, “Should I buy Facebook ads?” almost always comes up when I tell a local business owner that I do marketing and advertising consulting. I disappoint them with my answer. Let me show you why. One problem is that there […]

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“I went to a nearby Konditorei for coffee and a 15,000-calorie slice of cake and planned my assault on the city. I had with me the Observer Guide to Vienna, which included this piece of advice: ‘In Vienna, it is best to tackle the museums one at a time.’ Well thank you, I thought. All […]

Read the whole story in the New York Times

The stroke of a pen makes billions vanishAnd the printing presses are too slow.This is the day the world changes foreverAnd a new age comes Beware the snow. From down a long highway the walkerArrives again and is turned away.Foreign lands rejoice and rue the day.History writes Beware the talker. A is 6. B is 12. […]

In 1555, Nostradamus published a book containing 942 quatrains that were supposed to predict future events. Observers soon came across a handful of predictions that seemed to be fulfilled and Nostradamus quickly became a celebrity. In reality, most of his prophecies are worded vaguely enough to trigger wild bouts of apophenia. When King Henry II was […]

Fortune Tellers, Nostradamus, and the Mystical Con Reed Berkowitz is a designer of alternate reality games, experience fiction, and interactive theater.The next 8 paragraphs (with an occasional change,) are borrowed from his brilliant article published at medium.com. Apophenia is the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas) [Note from […]

Greetings Indy,   I felt the need to share this with you. I have determined as I have gotten older that finding and sharing authentic thoughts and feelings about people I admire or have done good things for me is good for my soul. Hopefully good for theirs as well.   There are many impressive […]

Several decades ago, when treating substance abuse problems, psychologists developed a technique called motivational interviewing. The central premise: Instead of trying to force other people to change, you’re better off helping them find their own intrinsic motivation to change. You do that by interviewing them — asking open-ended questions and listening carefully — and holding […]

Da Vinci and the 40 Answers (Virtual) – February 2, 2021 $750 (Academy alumni receive a 50 percent discount.) To Sell the Truth (Virtual) – February 16, 2021 Online Workshop$750 (Academy alumni receive a 50 percent discount.) If you participate in one of these workshops, you will become an Academy Alumnus and forever thereafter receive […]

Wow. Only 3 chapters left. And you are going to love the big, sad, optimistic, New Orleans ending. Can you believe we started this book 32 weeks ago? If you want to go back and refresh your memories of the earlier chapters, this is your ticket to get there. – Indy Beagle

When you see a less-expensive, but hard-to-find wine from a vineyard known for high-end wines, that wine will usually be a second pressing. If a first pressing yields 100 gallons of juice, the second pressing will yield maybe 10, hence the “hard-to-find.” The characteristic of a second pressing is that it tastes “juicier” due to […]

Greetings from the west coast of Scotland. I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed last week’s memo about twilight – also my favourite time of day.  I had the privilege of attending a course at the Wizard Academy in 2016 and joining in the workshop on eclipse day in Nashville the following year. […]

Keep Right on to the End of the Road Ev’ry road thro’ life is a long, long road, Fill’d with joys and sorrows too, As you journey on how your heart will yearn For the things most dear to you. With wealth and love ’tis so, But onward we must go. Keep right on to the end of the road, Keep […]

You own the conclusion you arrive at. “Q managed to make us feel special, that we were being given very critical information that basically was going to save all that is good in the world and the United States. We felt we were coming from a place of moral superiority. We were part of a […]

“Why is it that so many ghosts prefer to travel the halls of night? Ask the living and they will tell you that these spirits either have some unquenched desire or an unaddressed grievance that stirs them from their sleep and sends them out into the world in search of solace. But the living are […]

My friends and colleagues who have reached the age of 70 or beyond appear to have little interest in the topic of death. I’m a different kind of guy. It might be because twice in my last eight years, I thought I was making a grand exit. For me, neither time was a scary experience. […]

When you start pressing the grapes, the juice that gushes out easily is the first pressing. Squeeze the grapes tighter and you break into that small, inner chamber of the grape where a different kind of juice is gathered around the seeds.

“Giving a microphone to every human being is the worst mistake we have made in human history.” ME: Are you saying social media was a mistake? “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.” ­– Dale […]

We were sitting in my backyard sharing a $600 bottle of wine he had brought. He said, “I got all 250 of my employees together on a Zoom call and told them, ‘You can disagree passionately and share your opinion while we are in the discussion phase, but when a decision has been made, you […]

It was a Saturday afternoon in September 1989, and I was home alone unpacking boxes when the phone rang. And a woman that I did not know started to interrogate me. “Are you Dr. Lombardi?  Are you Dr. George Lombardi?  Are you an infectious disease specialist?  Did you live and work and do research in East Africa?  Are you considered to […]

“In Niteroi it is possible to smell a sea breeze that carries neither suntan lotion nor the stench of caffeine. Are you thinking that caffeine is odorless? Ask a dog. Be warned, however, that the dogs here speak only Portuguese.” – Mark Helprin, Memoir From Antproof Case, p.9

https://youtu.be/sZdXi9BfZAc?t=5 Want to read “Those Glorious Creative Handcuffs”?

This isn’t a photoshop fake! It really happened! Click here to read the story.

Last Warning: If you click this link it will take you to a webpage where you will see a 7-min video that will freak you out. The footage is real and 81 years old. It shows exactly what happened the last time the pendulum was in this position. When you’re finished, back-click to this page and thenclick my hat to go to the next […]

Origin Stories (Virtual) – January 26, 2021 $750 (Academy alumni receive a 50 percent discount.) Da Vinci and the 40 Answers (Virtual) – February 2, 2021 $750 (Academy alumni receive a 50 percent discount.) To Sell the Truth (Virtual) – February 16, 2021 Online Workshop$750 (Academy alumni receive a 50 percent discount.) If you participate […]

The Twilight of Consciousness I have long been fascinated by twilight. In fact, I often use that word to describe flavors that are complex and muted.  But what is twilight, really? “Twilight is the illumination of the lower atmosphere when the Sun is not directly visible because it is below the horizon. Twilight is produced by sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere, illuminating the […]

A beautiful photo, right? Let’s talk about why. First, notice where each person is looking. Second, look at the positions of their legs and feet. Third, the slanted horizon, blue waves at the left, trees at the right with water-blue clouds, low over the trees. But these are the kinds of things you can see […]

Would you like to start at the beginning of Manley’s book? Here’s how to do that.  Do you realize this marvelous book has only 5 more chapters? – Indy

“There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad. Of the good, we always think of wisdom, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, humility; and the qualities of cruelty, greed, self-interest, graspingness, and rapacity are universally considered undesirable. And yet in our structure of […]

An old man meets a young man who asks: “Do you remember me?” And the old man says no. Then the young man tells him he was his student, And the teacher asks: “What do you do, what do you do in life?” The young man answers: “Well, I became a teacher.” “ah, how good, […]

I am a game designer with experience in a very small niche. I create and research games designed to be played in reality. I’ve worked in Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), LARPs, experience fiction, interactive theater, and “serious games”. Stories and games that can start on a computer, and finish in the real world. Fictions designed […]

Would you like to start at the beginning of Manley’s book? Here’s how to do that.  And now for the sad news: this book has only six more chapters. – Indy