"How to liquidate the USA debts without entering the nuclear war"

This title on an ad in today's Financial Times was intriguing. Here is what the first paragraph said.

"Today the total debt of the USA amounts to over 100 trillion dollars which is constantly increasing. In order to liquidate all the debt obligations and to save the name, any debtor reuires a force-majeure circumstance to refer to, and therefore not pay the debt. The force-majeure circumstances on a global scale could be wars and revolutions. That is why the threat of the world war is becoming more real."

Wow! Is the threat of a world war more today than it has been? I am not sure that I believe it.

The solution they recommend is elimination of paper currency, and its replacement with gold. While I can't claim to understand the implications, the ad has made it sound like a simple thing. Here is how they close their ad.

"Everyone is starting afresh. No one owes anything to anyone."
Gold and Freedom."

Interesting, particularly, if doable. There is a website listed in the ad sterligoff.com. I know nothing else about them, and while I did go to their website, I could not find this particular ad.

"Quality is in the eye of the beholder"

Our assumptions mold our behavior. We have all grown up learning to do our personal best, and that "good enough isn't good enough." There even used to be an award at my work - the GENI award "Good Enough Never Is."

Yet, we have also be been frustrated by people taking much longer to finish a task. Part of the reason it is taking them longer is that they are striving for perfection. If that perfection does not matter to you, the receiver of the work, then that work is wasted. I remember coaching members of my team to give me a one day assignment in one day (with the quality that I expected), rather than in one week (with perfect quality). At school we had to make compromises - at work we have to make compromises, so why not in personal life?

While this rule applies most of the time, there are exceptions too. Sometimes you have to educate the beholder. This is also known as managing expectations - your own or someone else's.

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Thanks to Jeff Wildfogel and his "Creating Breakthroughs" class at Stanford University for much of the content above.

I will see if if I believe it

We are all used to the expression - I will believe it if I see it. Recently I have also been hearing a modified version - I will see it if I believe it.

Stated another way, it is - you see things not as they are, but as you are.

Brought back memories from a psychology course I took as an undergraduate (With Professor Ram Adhar Singh). He cited an example of a professor, whose car had the words "Silver Streak" painted on the side. Every time, this professor stepped out of the office to drive out for lunch, he had to do a double take, as the words would appear "Silver STEAK" to him.

Has it happened to you during an argument with a friend - that both of you have read the same book, yet drawn totally opposite conclusions about lessons from the book? You see what you believe.

In the 70's, there was a Psychology study done at Stanford University, where a few psychology graduate students got themselves admitted to an insane asylum under a made-up condition (Existential Anxiety). Once they were in, they acted perfectly normal - but they were not released. The doctors kept on finding new things that were wrong about them. One of the things they did was to document all their experiences. The doctors termed this as a condition - "Excessive Writing." The other inmates actually diagnosed this condition much better, by asking these students - "are you writing about your experiences here."

So, if someone feels slighted by what you say, think about it. Sometimes they may be looking to feel slighted, and will pick the one statement out of 100 that in their mind they can interpret to mean that you have slighted them. The big issue is not that they did it. It is that they did it subconsciously, and truly believe it.