text:
Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think
Here's how to make the most of it.
Luci Gutiérrez
What Americans Do Now Will Define Us Forever
Adam Serwer
'It Makes Us Want to Support Him More'
Peter Nicholas
The Rise of Coffee Shaming
Amanda Mull
Where Is Ivanka?
Elaina Plott
Arthur C. Brooks
"It's not true that no one needs you anymore."
These words came from an elderly woman sitting behind me on a late-night flight from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The plane was dark and quiet. A man I assumed to be her husband murmured almost inaudibly in response, something to the effect of "I wish I was dead."
Again, the woman: "Oh, stop saying that."
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I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but couldn't help it. I listened with morbid fascination, forming an image of the man in my head as they talked. I imagined someone who had worked hard all his life in relative obscurity, someone with unfulfilled dreams—perhaps of the degree he never attained, the career he never pursued, the company he never started.
At the end of the flight, as the lights switched on, I finally got a look at the desolate man. I was shocked. I recognized him—he was, and still is, world-famous. Then in his mid‑80s, he was beloved as a hero for his courage, patriotism, and accomplishments many decades ago.
As he walked up the aisle of the plane behind me, other passengers greeted him with veneration. Standing at the door of the cockpit, the pilot stopped him and said, "Sir, I have admired you since I was a little boy." The older man—apparently wishing for death just a few minutes earlier—beamed with pride at the recognition of his past glories.
For selfish reasons, I couldn't get the cognitive dissonance of that scene out of my mind. It was the summer of 2015, shortly after my 51st birthday. I was not world-famous like the man on the plane, but my professional life was going very well. I was the president of a flourishing Washington think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. I had written some best-selling books. People came to my speeches. My columns were published in The New York Times.
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But I had started to wonder: Can I really keep this going? I work like a maniac. But even if I stayed at it 12 hours a day, seven days a week, at some point my career would slow and stop. And when it did, what then? Would I one day be looking back wistfully and wishing I were dead? Was there anything I could do, starting now, to give myself a shot at avoiding misery—and maybe even achieve happiness—when the music inevitably stops?
Though these questions were personal, I decided to approach them as the social scientist I am, treating them as a research project. It felt unnatural—like a surgeon taking out his own appendix. But I plunged ahead, and for the past four years, I have been on a quest to figure out how to turn my eventual professional decline from a matter of dread into an opportunity for progress.
Here's what I've found.
The field of "happiness studies" has boomed over the past two decades, and a consensus has developed about well-being as we advance through life. In The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50, Jonathan Rauch, a Brookings Institution scholar and an Atlantic contributing editor, reviews the strong evidence suggesting that the happiness of most adults declines through their 30s and 40s, then bottoms out in their early 50s. Nothing about this pattern is set in stone, of course. But the data seem eerily consistent with my experience: My 40s and early 50s were not an especially happy period of my life, notwithstanding my professional fortunes.
From December 2014: Jonathan Rauch on the real roots of midlife crisis
So what can people expect after that, based on the data? The news is mixed. Almost all studies of happiness over the life span show that, in wealthier countries, most people's contentment starts to increase again in their 50s, until age 70 or so. That is where things get less predictable, however. After 70, some people stay steady in happiness; others get happier until death. Others—men in particular—see their happiness plummet. Indeed, depression and suicide rates for men increase after age 75.
This last group would seem to include the hero on the plane. A few researchers have looked at this cohort to understand what drives their unhappiness. It is, in a word, irrelevance. In 2007, a team of academic researchers at UCLA and Princeton analyzed data on more than 1,000 older adults. Their findings, published in the Journal of Gerontology, showed that senior citizens who rarely or never "felt useful" were nearly three times as likely as those who frequently felt useful to develop a mild disability, and were more than three times as likely to have died during the course of the study.
One might think that gifted and accomplished people, such as the man on the plane, would be less susceptible than others to this sense of irrelevance; after all, accomplishment is a well-documented source of happiness. If current accomplishment brings happiness, then shouldn't the memory of that accomplishment provide some happiness as well?
Maybe not. Though the literature on this question is sparse, giftedness and achievements early in life do not appear to provide an insurance policy against suffering later on. In 1999, Carole Holahan and Charles Holahan, psychologists at the University of Texas, published an influential paper in The International Journal of Aging and Human Development that looked at hundreds of older adults who early in life had been identified as highly gifted. The Holahans' conclusion: "Learning at a younger age of membership in a study of intellectual giftedness was related to … less favorable psychological well-being at age eighty."
This study may simply be showing that it's hard to live up to high expectations, and that telling your kid she is a genius is not necessarily good parenting. (The Holahans surmise that the children identified as gifted might have made intellectual ability more central to their self-appraisal, creating "unrealistic expectations for success" and causing them to fail to "take into account the many other life influences on success and recognition.") However, abundant evidence suggests that the waning of ability in people of high accomplishment is especially brutal psychologically. Consider professional athletes, many of whom struggle profoundly after their sports career ends. Tragic examples abound, involving depression, addiction, or suicide; unhappiness in retired athletes may even be the norm, at least temporarily. A study published in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology in 2003, which charted the life satisfaction of former Olympic athletes, found that they generally struggled with a low sense of personal control when they first stopped competing.
Recently, I asked Dominique Dawes, a former Olympic gold-medal gymnast, how normal life felt after competing and winning at the highest levels. She told me that she is happy, but that the adjustment wasn't easy—and still isn't, even though she won her last Olympic medal in 2000. "My Olympic self would ruin my marriage and leave my kids feeling inadequate," she told me, because it is so demanding and hard-driving. "Living life as if every day is an Olympics only makes those around me miserable."
Why might former elite performers have such a hard time? No academic research has yet proved this, but I strongly suspect that the memory of remarkable ability, if that is the source of one's self-worth, might, for some, provide an invidious contrast to a later, less remarkable life. "Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy," Alex Dias Ribeiro, a former Formula 1 race-car driver, once wrote. "For such a person, the end of a successful career is the end of the line. His destiny is to die of bitterness or to search for more success in other careers and to go on living from success to success until he falls dead. In this case, there will not be life after success."
Call it the Principle of Psychoprofessional Gravitation: the idea that the agony of professional oblivion is directly related to the height of professional prestige previously achieved, and to one's emotional attachment to that prestige. Problems related to achieving professional success might appear to be a pretty good species of problem to have; even raising this issue risks seeming precious. But if you reach professional heights and are deeply invested in being high up, you can suffer mightily when you inevitably fall. That's the man on the plane. Maybe that will be you, too. And, without significant intervention, I suspect it will be me.
The Principle of Psychoprofessional Gravitation can help explain the many cases of people who have done work of world-historical significance yet wind up feeling like failures. Take Charles Darwin, who was just 22 when he set out on his five-year voyage aboard the Beagle in 1831. Returning at 27, he was celebrated throughout Europe for his discoveries in botany and zoology, and for his early theories of evolution. Over the next 30 years, Darwin took enormous pride in sitting atop the celebrity-scientist pecking order, developing his theories and publishing them as books and essays—the most famous being On the Origin of Species, in 1859.
From July 1860: A review of Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species'
But as Darwin progressed into his 50s, he stagnated; he hit a wall in his research. At the same time an Austrian monk by the name of Gregor Mendel discovered what Darwin needed to continue his work: the theory of genetic inheritance. Unfortunately, Mendel's work was published in an obscure academic journal and Darwin never saw it—and in any case, Darwin did not have the mathematical ability to understand it. From then on he made little progress. Depressed in his later years, he wrote to a close friend, "I have not the heart or strength at my age to begin any investigation lasting years, which is the only thing which I enjoy."
Presumably, Darwin would be pleasantly surprised to learn how his fame grew after his death, in 1882. From what he could see when he was old, however, the world had passed him by, and he had become irrelevant. That could have been Darwin on the plane behind me that night.
It also could have been a younger version of me, because I have had precocious experience with professional decline.
As a child, I had just one goal: to be the world's greatest French-horn player. I worked at it slavishly, practicing hours a day, seeking out the best teachers, and playing in any ensemble I could find. I had pictures of famous horn players on my bedroom wall for inspiration. And for a while, I thought my dream might come true. At 19, I left college to take a job playing professionally in a touring chamber-music ensemble. My plan was to keep rising through the classical-music ranks, joining a top symphony orchestra in a few years or maybe even becoming a soloist—the most exalted job a classical musician can hold.
But then, in my early 20s, a strange thing happened: I started getting worse. To this day, I have no idea why. My technique began to suffer, and I had no explanation for it. Nothing helped. I visited great teachers and practiced more, but I couldn't get back to where I had been. Pieces that had been easy to play became hard; pieces that had been hard became impossible.
The data are shockingly clear that for most people, in most fields, professional decline starts earlier than almost anyone thinks.
Perhaps the worst moment in my young but flailing career came at age 22, when I was performing at Carnegie Hall. While delivering a short speech about the music I was about to play, I stepped forward, lost my footing, and fell off the stage into the audience. On the way home from the concert, I mused darkly that the experience was surely a message from God.
But I sputtered along for nine more years. I took a position in the City Orchestra of Barcelona, where I increased my practicing but my playing gradually deteriorated. Eventually I found a job teaching at a small music conservatory in Florida, hoping for a magical turnaround that never materialized. Realizing that maybe I ought to hedge my bets, I went back to college via distance learning, and earned my bachelor's degree shortly before my 30th birthday. I secretly continued my studies at night, earning a master's degree in economics a year later. Finally I had to admit defeat: I was never going to turn around my faltering musical career. So at 31 I gave up, abandoning my musical aspirations entirely, to pursue a doctorate in public policy.
Life goes on, right? Sort of. After finishing my studies, I became a university professor, a job I enjoyed. But I still thought every day about my beloved first vocation. Even now, I regularly dream that I am onstage, and wake to remember that my childhood aspirations are now only phantasms.
I am lucky to have accepted my decline at a young enough age that I could redirect my life into a new line of work. Still, to this day, the sting of that early decline makes these words difficult to write. I vowed to myself that it wouldn't ever happen again.
Will it happen again? In some professions, early decline is inescapable. No one expects an Olympic athlete to remain competitive until age 60. But in many physically nondemanding occupations, we implicitly reject the inevitability of decline before very old age. Sure, our quads and hamstrings may weaken a little as we age. But as long as we retain our marbles, our quality of work as a writer, lawyer, executive, or entrepreneur should remain high up to the very end, right? Many people think so. I recently met a man a bit older than I am who told me he planned to "push it until the wheels came off." In effect, he planned to stay at the very top of his game by any means necessary, and then keel over.
But the odds are he won't be able to. The data are shockingly clear that for most people, in most fields, decline starts earlier than almost anyone thinks.
According to research by Dean Keith Simonton, a professor emeritus of psychology at UC Davis and one of the world's leading experts on the trajectories of creative careers, success and productivity increase for the first 20 years after the inception of a career, on average. So if you start a career in earnest at 30, expect to do your best work around 50 and go into decline soon after that.
The specific timing of peak and decline vary somewhat depending on the field. Benjamin Jones, a professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, has spent years studying when people are most likely to make prizewinning scientific discoveries and develop key inventions. His findings can be summarized by this little ditty:
Age is, of course, a fever chill
that every physicist must fear.
He's better dead than living still
when once he's past his thirtieth year.
The author of those gloomy lines? Paul Dirac, a winner of the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Dirac overstates the point, but only a little. Looking at major inventors and Nobel winners going back more than a century, Jones has found that the most common age for producing a magnum opus is the late 30s. He has shown that the likelihood of a major discovery increases steadily through one's 20s and 30s and then declines through one's 40s, 50s, and 60s. Are there outliers? Of course. But the likelihood of producing a major innovation at age 70 is approximately what it was at age 20—almost nonexistent.
Much of literary achievement follows a similar pattern. Simonton has shown that poets peak in their early 40s. Novelists generally take a little longer. When Martin Hill Ortiz, a poet and novelist, collected data on New York Times fiction best sellers from 1960 to 2015, he found that authors were likeliest to reach the No. 1 spot in their 40s and 50s. Despite the famous productivity of a few novelists well into old age, Ortiz shows a steep drop-off in the chance of writing a best seller after the age of 70. (Some nonfiction writers—especially historians—peak later, as we shall see in a minute.)
Whole sections of bookstores are dedicated to becoming successful. There is no section marked "managing your professional decline."
Entrepreneurs peak and decline earlier, on average. After earning fame and fortune in their 20s, many tech entrepreneurs are in creative decline by age 30. In 2014, the Harvard Business Review reported that founders of enterprises valued at $1 billion or more by venture capitalists tend to cluster in the 20-to-34 age range. Subsequent research has found that the clustering might be slightly later, but all studies in this area have found that the majority of successful start-ups have founders under age 50.
This research concerns people at the very top of professions that are atypical. But the basic finding appears to apply more broadly. Scholars at Boston College's Center for Retirement Research studied a wide variety of jobs and found considerable susceptibility to age-related decline in fields ranging from policing to nursing. Other research has found that the best-performing home-plate umpires in Major League Baseball have 18 years less experience and are 23 years younger than the worst-performing umpires (who are 56.1 years old, on average). Among air traffic controllers, the age-related decline is so sharp—and the potential consequences of decline-related errors so dire—that the mandatory retirement age is 56.
In sum, if your profession requires mental processing speed or significant analytic capabilities—the kind of profession most college graduates occupy—noticeable decline is probably going to set in earlier than you imagine.
If decline not only is inevitable but also happens earlier than most of us expect, what should we do when it comes for us?
Whole sections of bookstores are dedicated to becoming successful. The shelves are packed with titles like The Science of Getting Rich and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. There is no section marked "Managing Your Professional Decline."
But some people have managed their declines well. Consider the case of Johann Sebastian Bach. Born in 1685 to a long line of prominent musicians in central Germany, Bach quickly distinguished himself as a musical genius. In his 65 years, he published more than 1,000 compositions for all the available instrumentations of his day.
Early in his career, Bach was considered an astoundingly gifted organist and improviser. Commissions rolled in; royalty sought him out; young composers emulated his style. He enjoyed real prestige.
But it didn't last—in no small part because his career was overtaken by musical trends ushered in by, among others, his own son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, known as C.P.E. to the generations that followed. The fifth of Bach's 20 children, C.P.E. exhibited the musical gifts his father had. He mastered the baroque idiom, but he was more fascinated with a new "classical" style of music, which was taking Europe by storm. As classical music displaced baroque, C.P.E.'s prestige boomed while his father's music became passé.
Bach easily could have become embittered, like Darwin. Instead, he chose to redesign his life, moving from innovator to instructor. He spent a good deal of his last 10 years writing The Art of Fugue, not a famous or popular work in his time, but one intended to teach the techniques of the baroque to his children and students—and, as unlikely as it seemed at the time, to any future generations that might be interested. In his later years, he lived a quieter life as a teacher and a family man.
What's the difference between Bach and Darwin? Both were preternaturally gifted and widely known early in life. Both attained permanent fame posthumously. Where they differed was in their approach to the midlife fade. When Darwin fell behind as an innovator, he became despondent and depressed; his life ended in sad inactivity. When Bach fell behind, he reinvented himself as a master instructor. He died beloved, fulfilled, and—though less famous than he once had been—respected.
The lesson for you and me, especially after 50: Be Johann Sebastian Bach, not Charles Darwin.
How does one do that?
A potential answer lies in the work of the British psychologist Raymond Cattell, who in the early 1940s introduced the concepts of fluid and crystallized intelligence. Cattell defined fluid intelligence as the ability to reason, analyze, and solve novel problems—what we commonly think of as raw intellectual horsepower. Innovators typically have an abundance of fluid intelligence. It is highest relatively early in adulthood and diminishes starting in one's 30s and 40s. This is why tech entrepreneurs, for instance, do so well so early, and why older people have a much harder time innovating.
Crystallized intelligence, in contrast, is the ability to use knowledge gained in the past. Think of it as possessing a vast library and understanding how to use it. It is the essence of wisdom. Because crystallized intelligence relies on an accumulating stock of knowledge, it tends to increase through one's 40s, and does not diminish until very late in life.
Careers that rely primarily on fluid intelligence tend to peak early, while those that use more crystallized intelligence peak later. For example, Dean Keith Simonton has found that poets—highly fluid in their creativity—tend to have produced half their lifetime creative output by age 40 or so. Historians—who rely on a crystallized stock of knowledge—don't reach this milestone until about 60.
Here's a practical lesson we can extract from all this: No matter what mix of intelligence your field requires, you can always endeavor to weight your career away from innovation and toward the strengths that persist, or even increase, later in life.
Like what? As Bach demonstrated, teaching is an ability that decays very late in life, a principal exception to the general pattern of professional decline over time. A study in The Journal of Higher Education showed that the oldest college professors in disciplines requiring a large store of fixed knowledge, specifically the humanities, tended to get evaluated most positively by students. This probably explains the professional longevity of college professors, three-quarters of whom plan to retire after age 65—more than half of them after 70, and some 15 percent of them after 80. (The average American retires at 61.) One day, during my first year as a professor, I asked a colleague in his late 60s whether he'd ever considered retiring. He laughed, and told me he was more likely to leave his office horizontally than vertically.
I need a reverse bucket list. My goal for each year of the rest of my life should be to throw out things, obligations, and relationships.
Our dean might have chuckled ruefully at this—college administrators complain that research productivity among tenured faculty drops off significantly in the last decades of their career. Older professors take up budget slots that could otherwise be used to hire young scholars hungry to do cutting-edge research. But perhaps therein lies an opportunity: If older faculty members can shift the balance of their work from research to teaching without loss of professional prestige, younger faculty members can take on more research.
Patterns like this match what I've seen as the head of a think tank full of scholars of all ages. There are many exceptions, but the most profound insights tend to come from those in their 30s and early 40s. The best synthesizers and explainers of complicated ideas—that is, the best teachers—tend to be in their mid-60s or older, some of them well into their 80s.
That older people, with their stores of wisdom, should be the most successful teachers seems almost cosmically right. No matter what our profession, as we age we can dedicate ourselves to sharing knowledge in some meaningful way.
A few years ago, I saw a cartoon of a man on his deathbed saying, "I wish I'd bought more crap." It has always amazed me that many wealthy people keep working to increase their wealth, amassing far more money than they could possibly spend or even usefully bequeath. One day I asked a wealthy friend why this is so. Many people who have gotten rich know how to measure their self-worth only in pecuniary terms, he explained, so they stay on the hamster wheel, year after year. They believe that at some point, they will finally accumulate enough to feel truly successful, happy, and therefore ready to die.
This is a mistake, and not a benign one. Most Eastern philosophy warns that focusing on acquisition leads to attachment and vanity, which derail the search for happiness by obscuring one's essential nature. As we grow older, we shouldn't acquire more, but rather strip things away to find our true selves—and thus, peace.
At some point, writing one more book will not add to my life satisfaction; it will merely stave off the end of my book-writing career. The canvas of my life will have another brushstroke that, if I am being forthright, others will barely notice, and will certainly not appreciate very much. The same will be true for most other markers of my success.
What I need to do, in effect, is stop seeing my life as a canvas to fill, and start seeing it more as a block of marble to chip away at and shape something out of. I need a reverse bucket list. My goal for each year of the rest of my life should be to throw out things, obligations, and relationships until I can clearly see my refined self in its best form.
And that self is … who, exactly?
Last year, the search for an answer to this question took me deep into the South Indian countryside, to a town called Palakkad, near the border between the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. I was there to meet the guru Sri Nochur Venkataraman, known as Acharya ("Teacher") to his disciples. Acharya is a quiet, humble man dedicated to helping people attain enlightenment; he has no interest in Western techies looking for fresh start-up ideas or burnouts trying to escape the religious traditions they were raised in. Satisfied that I was neither of those things, he agreed to talk with me.
I told him my conundrum: Many people of achievement suffer as they age, because they lose their abilities, gained over many years of hard work. Is this suffering inescapable, like a cosmic joke on the proud? Or is there a loophole somewhere—a way around the suffering?
Acharya answered elliptically, explaining an ancient Hindu teaching about the stages of life, or ashramas. The first is Brahmacharya, the period of youth and young adulthood dedicated to learning. The second is Grihastha, when a person builds a career, accumulates wealth, and creates a family. In this second stage, the philosophers find one of life's most common traps: People become attached to earthly rewards—money, power, sex, prestige—and thus try to make this stage last a lifetime.
The antidote to these worldly temptations is Vanaprastha, the third ashrama, whose name comes from two Sanskrit words meaning "retiring" and "into the forest." This is the stage, usually starting around age 50, in which we purposefully focus less on professional ambition, and become more and more devoted to spirituality, service, and wisdom. This doesn't mean that you need to stop working when you turn 50—something few people can afford to do—only that your life goals should adjust.
Vanaprastha is a time for study and training for the last stage of life, Sannyasa, which should be totally dedicated to the fruits of enlightenment. In times past, some Hindu men would leave their family in old age, take holy vows, and spend the rest of their life at the feet of masters, praying and studying. Even if sitting in a cave at age 75 isn't your ambition, the point should still be clear: As we age, we should resist the conventional lures of success in order to focus on more transcendentally important things.
I told Acharya the story about the man on the plane. He listened carefully, and thought for a minute. "He failed to leave Grihastha," he told me. "He was addicted to the rewards of the world." He explained that the man's self-worth was probably still anchored in the memories of professional successes many years earlier, his ongoing recognition purely derivative of long-lost skills. Any glory today was a mere shadow of past glories. Meanwhile, he'd completely skipped the spiritual development of Vanaprastha, and was now missing out on the bliss of Sannyasa.
There is a message in this for those of us suffering from the Principle of Psychoprofessional Gravitation. Say you are a hard-charging, type-A lawyer, executive, entrepreneur, or—hypothetically, of course—president of a think tank. From early adulthood to middle age, your foot is on the gas, professionally. Living by your wits—by your fluid intelligence—you seek the material rewards of success, you attain a lot of them, and you are deeply attached to them. But the wisdom of Hindu philosophy—and indeed the wisdom of many philosophical traditions—suggests that you should be prepared to walk away from these rewards before you feel ready. Even if you're at the height of your professional prestige, you probably need to scale back your career ambitions in order to scale up your metaphysical ones.
When the New York Times columnist David Brooks talks about the difference between "résumé virtues" and "eulogy virtues," he's effectively putting the ashramas in a practical context. Résumé virtues are professional and oriented toward earthly success. They require comparison with others. Eulogy virtues are ethical and spiritual, and require no comparison. Your eulogy virtues are what you would want people to talk about at your funeral. As in He was kind and deeply spiritual, not He made senior vice president at an astonishingly young age and had a lot of frequent-flier miles.
From November 2002: David Brooks on the spread of elitism
You won't be around to hear the eulogy, but the point Brooks makes is that we live the most fulfilling life—especially once we reach midlife—by pursuing the virtues that are most meaningful to us.
I suspect that my own terror of professional decline is rooted in a fear of death—a fear that, even if it is not conscious, motivates me to act as if death will never come by denying any degradation in my résumé virtues. This denial is destructive, because it leads me to ignore the eulogy virtues that bring me the greatest joy.
The biggest mistake professionally successful people make is attempting to sustain peak accomplishment indefinitely.
How can I overcome this tendency? The Buddha recommends, of all things, corpse meditation: Many Theravada Buddhist monasteries in Thailand and Sri Lanka display photos of corpses in various states of decomposition for the monks to contemplate. "This body, too," students are taught to say about their own body, "such is its nature, such is its future, such is its unavoidable fate." At first this seems morbid. But its logic is grounded in psychological principles—and it's not an exclusively Eastern idea. "To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us," Michel de Montaigne wrote in the 16th century, "let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death."
Psychologists call this desensitization, in which repeated exposure to something repellent or frightening makes it seem ordinary, prosaic, not scary. And for death, it works. In 2017, a team of researchers at several American universities recruited volunteers to imagine they were terminally ill or on death row, and then to write blog posts about either their imagined feelings or their would-be final words. The researchers then compared these expressions with the writings and last words of people who were actually dying or facing capital punishment. The results, published in Psychological Science, were stark: The words of the people merely imagining their imminent death were three times as negative as those of the people actually facing death—suggesting that, counterintuitively, death is scarier when it is theoretical and remote than when it is a concrete reality closing in.
For most people, actively contemplating our demise so that it is present and real (rather than avoiding the thought of it via the mindless pursuit of worldly success) can make death less frightening; embracing death reminds us that everything is temporary, and can make each day of life more meaningful. "Death destroys a man," E. M. Forster wrote, but "the idea of Death saves him."
Decline is inevitable, and it occurs earlier than almost any of us wants to believe. But misery is not inevitable. Accepting the natural cadence of our abilities sets up the possibility of transcendence, because it allows the shifting of attention to higher spiritual and life priorities.
But such a shift demands more than mere platitudes. I embarked on my research with the goal of producing a tangible road map to guide me during the remaining years of my life. This has yielded four specific commitments.
The biggest mistake professionally successful people make is attempting to sustain peak accomplishment indefinitely, trying to make use of the kind of fluid intelligence that begins fading relatively early in life. This is impossible. The key is to enjoy accomplishments for what they are in the moment, and to walk away perhaps before I am completely ready—but on my own terms.
So: I've resigned my job as president of the American Enterprise Institute, effective right about the time this essay is published. While I have not detected deterioration in my performance, it was only a matter of time. Like many executive positions, the job is heavily reliant on fluid intelligence. Also, I wanted freedom from the consuming responsibilities of that job, to have time for more spiritual pursuits. In truth, this decision wasn't entirely about me. I love my institution and have seen many others like it suffer when a chief executive lingered too long.
Leaving something you love can feel a bit like a part of you is dying. In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a concept called bardo, which is a state of existence between death and rebirth—"like a moment when you step toward the edge of a precipice," as a famous Buddhist teacher puts it. I am letting go of a professional life that answers the question Who am I?
I am extremely fortunate to have the means and opportunity to be able to walk away from a job. Many people cannot afford to do that. But you don't necessarily have to quit your job; what's important is striving to detach progressively from the most obvious earthly rewards—power, fame and status, money—even if you continue to work or advance a career. The real trick is walking into the next stage of life, Vanaprastha, to conduct the study and training that prepare us for fulfillment in life's final stage.
Time is limited, and professional ambition crowds out things that ultimately matter more. To move from résumé virtues to eulogy virtues is to move from activities focused on the self to activities focused on others. This is not easy for me; I am a naturally egotistical person. But I have to face the fact that the costs of catering to selfishness are ruinous—and I now work every day to fight this tendency.
Fortunately, an effort to serve others can play to our strengths as we age. Remember, people whose work focuses on teaching or mentorship, broadly defined, peak later in life. I am thus moving to a phase in my career in which I can dedicate myself fully to sharing ideas in service of others, primarily by teaching at a university. My hope is that my most fruitful years lie ahead.
Because I've talked a lot about various religious and spiritual traditions—and emphasized the pitfalls of overinvestment in career success—readers might naturally conclude that I am making a Manichaean separation between the worlds of worship and work, and suggesting that the emphasis be on worship. That is not my intention. I do strongly recommend that each person explore his or her spiritual self—I plan to dedicate a good part of the rest of my life to the practice of my own faith, Roman Catholicism. But this is not incompatible with work; on the contrary, if we can detach ourselves from worldly attachments and redirect our efforts toward the enrichment and teaching of others, work itself can become a transcendental pursuit.
"The aim and final end of all music," Bach once said, "should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul." Whatever your metaphysical convictions, refreshment of the soul can be the aim of your work, like Bach's.
Bach finished each of his manuscripts with the words Soli Deo gloria—"Glory to God alone." He failed, however, to write these words on his last manuscript, "Contrapunctus 14," from The Art of Fugue, which abruptly stops mid-measure. His son C.P.E. added these words to the score: "Über dieser Fuge … ist der Verfasser gestorben" ("At this point in the fugue … the composer died"). Bach's life and work merged with his prayers as he breathed his last breath. This is my aspiration.
Throughout this essay, I have focused on the effect that the waning of my work prowess will have on my happiness. But an abundance of research strongly suggests that happiness—not just in later years but across the life span—is tied directly to the health and plentifulness of one's relationships. Pushing work out of its position of preeminence—sooner rather than later—to make space for deeper relationships can provide a bulwark against the angst of professional decline.
Why Women Still Can't Have It All
A World Without Work
Quit Your Job
Dedicating more time to relationships, and less to work, is not inconsistent with continued achievement. "He is like a tree planted by streams of water," the Book of Psalms says of the righteous person, "yielding its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither, and who prospers in all he does." Think of an aspen tree. To live a life of extraordinary accomplishment is—like the tree—to grow alone, reach majestic heights alone, and die alone. Right?
Wrong. The aspen tree is an excellent metaphor for a successful person—but not, it turns out, for its solitary majesty. Above the ground, it may appear solitary. Yet each individual tree is part of an enormous root system, which is together one plant. In fact, an aspen is one of the largest living organisms in the world; a single grove in Utah, called Pando, spans 106 acres and weighs an estimated 13 million pounds.
The secret to bearing my decline—to enjoying it—is to become more conscious of the roots linking me to others. If I have properly developed the bonds of love among my family and friends, my own withering will be more than offset by blooming in others.
When I talk about this personal research project I've been pursuing, people usually ask: Whatever happened to the hero on the plane?
I think about him a lot. He's still famous, popping up in the news from time to time. Early on, when I saw a story about him, I would feel a flash of something like pity—which I now realize was really only a refracted sense of terror about my own future. Poor guy really meant I'm screwed.
But as my grasp of the principles laid out in this essay has deepened, my fear has declined proportionately. My feeling toward the man on the plane is now one of gratitude for what he taught me. I hope that he can find the peace and joy he is inadvertently helping me attain.
The Unexplained Noise 2 Percent of People Can Hear
A man is tormented by a low-frequency humming sound emanating from his house, which he believes is caused by a nearby gas pipeline.
Emily Buder
Arthur C. Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute.
Jonathan Drake / Reuters / The Atlantic
If multiracial democracy cannot be defended in America, it will not be defended elsewhere.
The conservative intelligentsia flocked to the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., this week for the National Conservatism Conference, an opportunity for people who may never have punched a time clock to declare their eternal enmity toward elites and to attempt to offer contemporary conservative nationalism the intellectual framework that has so far proved elusive.
Yoram Hazony, the Israeli scholar who organized the conference, explicitly rejected white nationalism, barring several well-known adherents from attending, my colleague Emma Green reported. But despite Hazony's efforts, the insistence that "nationalism" is, at its core, about defending borders, eschewing military interventions, and promoting a shared American identity did not prevent attendees from explicitly declaring that American laws should favor white immigrants.
Rachel Jessen
Amid a convulsive week in American politics, at one of the darkest rallies Donald Trump has ever held, his base showed up in force to tell the president he's done nothing wrong.
GREENVILLE, N.C.—Before the rally began, I wanted to know why they'd come.
In the heavy, humid hours, I walked up and down the line winding through a parking lot at East Carolina University to interview some two dozen people who wanted to see the president. Many didn't make it inside. About 90 minutes before Donald Trump took the stage, police announced that the 8,000-person basketball arena was full and those still waiting would have to watch on an oversize TV monitor set up outside. Rather than head home, they stuck around for a tailgate party of sorts.
Some cracked open beers and lit cigars, sitting on folding chairs in front of the TV. People walked by in shirts that read In Trump We Trust and Fuck Off, We're Full. Earlier, in the 100-degree heat, a four-member family band called the Terry Train entertained the crowd with a song mocking CNN. Lying Wolf Blitzer and Lying John King. Don Lemon lies about everything … Erin Burnett, can you hear us yet? We'll give you a story you can never forget. It built to this refrain: CNN sucks!
Michaela Rehle / Reuters
A few years ago, I lived in a walkup apartment in the East Village of New York. Every so often descending the stairway, I would catch a glimpse of a particular family with young children in its Sisyphean attempts to reach the fourth floor. The mom would fold the stroller to the size of a boogie board, then drag it behind her with her right hand, while cradling the younger and typically crying child in the crook of her left arm. Meanwhile, she would shout hygiene instructions in the direction of the older child, who would slap both hands against every other grimy step to use her little arms as leverage, like an adult negotiating the bolder steps of Machu Picchu. It looked like hell—or, as I once suggested to a roommate, a carefully staged public service announcement against family formation.
Richard Drury / Getty
Personal-finance gurus really hate coffee.
Suze Orman wants young people to stop "peeing" away millions of dollars on coffee. Last month, the personal-finance celebrity ignited a controversy on social media when a video she starred in for CNBC targeted a familiar villain: kids these days and their silly $5 lattes. Because brewing coffee at home is less expensive, Orman argued, purchasing it elsewhere is tantamount to flushing money away, which makes it a worthy symbol of Millennials' squandered resources.
Orman's not alone in this view. The old guard of personal finance has spent years turning the habit of buying coffee into a shorthand for Americans' profligacy, especially that of young Americans. Dave Ramsey, a finance personality who hosts a popular radio show on getting out of debt, says that forgoing lattes is one of four keys to saving thousands of dollars. Kevin O'Leary, one of the investors on the entrepreneurial reality show Shark Tank, once told CNBC, "I never buy a frape-latte-blah-blah-blah-woof-woof-woof." Even the official Twitter account for Chase Bank has gotten in on the fun, intimating via meme that a failure to brew at home is why young people don't have any money.
Patrick Semansky / AP
Her silence on the border crisis and on her father's racist tweets shows she has abandoned even the pretense of being a voice of reason inside the White House.
Ivanka Trump wants it both ways.
Since joining her father's White House as a senior adviser in early 2017, the first daughter has reserved the right to toggle between a strict and loose construction of her portfolio. When flashy opportunities arise—such as the chance to play diplomat with Kim Jong Un—the edges of her purview, which she often defines as "women's economic empowerment," become conveniently blurry. But when the issue du jour is particularly messy, she is quick to clarify its limits, thus absolving herself of accountability for problems that exist outside it. When The View's Abby Huntsman, for example, asked Trump in February why she didn't speak up about family separations along the U.S.-Mexico border, she objected that she is "not president of all women's issues."
Ethan Miller / Getty / Thanh Do / The Atlantic
I Wasn't a Fan of BTS. And Then I Was.
Lenika Cruz
The Korean supergroup's devoted following and chart-topping success have won them comparisons to the Beatles. Why was I surprised to get swept up in their magic?
I was already yawning when I sat down to watch Saturday Night Live one evening this past April. The host that night was Emma Stone, and the musical guest was BTS. I knew little about the seven-member South Korean supergroup—even though they had millions of fans worldwide, released multiple Billboard 200 chart-toppers, and recently delivered a speech at the United Nations. On Twitter, I saw plenty of enthusiasm, but also mockery directed at BTS and their followers. While I knew they would be the first K-pop act to perform on SNL, I had never listened to a BTS song before Stone introduced the first musical break.
The oh whoa ooh whoa backing vocals floated in, and a teasing bass line began as the lights went up to reveal seven figures—their backs to the camera—in dark suits and an array of hair colors. They swayed from side to side and spun around. Then the one with the pink hair started singing.
Paul Spella / Katie Martin
An Epidemic of Disbelief
Barbara Bradley Hagerty
What new research reveals about sexual predators, and why police fail to catch them
Robert Spada walked into the decrepit warehouse in Detroit and surveyed the chaos: Thousands of cardboard boxes and large plastic bags were piled haphazardly throughout the cavernous space. The air inside was hot and musty. Spada, an assistant prosecutor, saw that some of the windows were open, others broken, exposing the room to the summer heat. Above the boxes, birds glided in slow, swooping circles.
It was August 17, 2009, and this brick fortress of a building housed evidence that had been collected by the Detroit Police Department. Spada's visit had been prompted by a question: Why were police sometimes unable to locate crucial evidence? The answer lay in the disarray before him.
Carlos Chavarría
The Economist Who Would Fix the American Dream
Gareth Cook
No one has done more to dispel the myth of social mobility than Raj Chetty. But he has a plan to make equality of opportunity a reality.
Raj Chetty got his biggest break before his life began. His mother, Anbu, grew up in Tamil Nadu, a tropical state at the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. Anbu showed the greatest academic potential of her five siblings, but her future was constrained by custom. Although Anbu's father encouraged her scholarly inclinations, there were no colleges in the area, and sending his daughter away for an education would have been unseemly.
But as Anbu approached the end of high school, a minor miracle redirected her life. A local tycoon, himself the father of a bright daughter, decided to open a women's college, housed in his elegant residence. Anbu was admitted to the inaugural class of 30 young women, learning English in the spacious courtyard under a thatched roof and traveling in the early mornings by bus to a nearby college to run chemistry experiments or dissect frogs' hearts before the men arrived.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
Tensions With Iran Reach the Point of Inevitability
Krishnadev Calamur
Even though both sides insist they don't want war, the existing tensions, combined with Iran's anger at being denied the benefits of the nuclear agreement, mean that one miscalculated provocation could lead to a larger conflagration.
Something like this was bound to happen.
The U.S. Navy destroyed an Iranian drone over the Strait of Hormuz after President Donald Trump said it came within "threatening" range and ignored "multiple calls to stand down."
Trump said the action taken by the USS Boxer, a Wasp-class amphibious assault, was "defensive." "This is the latest of many provocative and hostile actions against vessels operating in international waters," Trump said.
The confrontation came amid escalating provocations by the Iranian government, lashing out against the Trump administration's 'maximum pressure' campaign. Still, Trump has been reluctant to use force— on a recent occasion pulling back on a strike after Iran shot down an American drone, saying the U.S. response wouldn't have been proportionate. Today's action allows the Trump administration to appear tough, but, given the tensions, also risks escalation in an already volatile region.
Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty
Why Donald Trump's Racist Language Isn't Debatable
Ben Zimmer
Whether the president's tweets about four Democratic congresswomen of color are bigoted cannot be decided solely by dictionary definitions.
Last night, while President Donald Trump was keeping up his attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of color at a rally in North Carolina, Merriam-Webster tweeted out that the most searched term in its online dictionary at that time was racism.
It's been that kind of week—though hardly the first of its nature in the Trump era—when bigoted comments from the president have dominated the national discourse, and have led many to label the remarks as racist. That includes Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats (along with a few Republicans) in the House of Representatives, who passed a nonbinding resolution denouncing Trump's "racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color."
'1 Million Americans Will Be Shot in the Next Decade'
Jillian Banner
Trauma surgeons describe gun violence as a public-health crisis.
A Time Capsule of the Moon Landing
NASA employees and civilians remember the 1969 lunar landing.
More Popular Stories
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Rehashed Fashion » Oh the uncertainty!!!
Although the Presidential showdown is over, many Americans seem very unwilling to accept the results of our sham election. With states nullifying marijuana laws, raw milk bans, and Obamacare laws, is it any surprise that we we are seeing thousands signing petitions to secede from the union? As a government teacher, teaching the concept of federalism is always a struggle. Kids just don't seem to fully grasp the concept of layered government powers. However, with the union literally ripping apart at the seams, teaching federalism has been a breeze this year.
Our current state of affairs is strange, indeed. Most of us can remember the overwhelming sense of unity we Americans experienced after the 9/11 attacks. We sacrificed our civil liberties and felt united against a common enemy. Who could have imagined that just over a decade later, we would be witnessing the rumblings of civil war?
We are living in uncertain times. Our nation is facing the fiscal cliff, taxmageddon, election fraud, implementation of Obamacare, unlimited quantitative easing, more wars, further job layoffs, and the continual erosion of our civil liberties. How can a person or business plan for such stress on their pocketbooks?
Uncertainly is certainly the word of the week.
Posted: November 17th, 2012 under Education, Original Political Cartoons, Political commentary, Political Satire.


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Tag Archives: DC Entertainment
A Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Review – Why So Serious?
TITLE: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
STARRING: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg, Gal Gadot
DIRECTOR: Zack Snyder
STUDIOS: Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Entertainment, RatPac Entertainment, Atlas Entertainment, Cruel and Unusual films
RUN-TIME: 151 min
***WARNING: Spoilers ahead for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.***
This movie had a lot of mud thrown its way before even one shot was in the can. Some of that was fair. Much of it wasn't. Man of Steel wasn't as well received as many would have liked. Then people jumped on the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman. There was also a lot of skepticism about the inclusion of all the Justice League characters, not to mention Doomsday. And that's just some of it. So after all that, what's the bottom line on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice?
Is this movie as bad as so many critics say it is? No. Is it a deeply flawed movie? Yes.
After the destruction left in the wake of Superman's battle with Zod, the Man of Steel (Henry Cavill) unknowingly has an enemy in Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. Batman (Ben Affleck). Then, 18 months later Superman causes an international incident when he swoops in to save Lois Lane (Amy Adams) from a terrorist group. While his intentions are good, Superman's actions have sparked a mass debate about if and how he should be monitored and regulated. Meanwhile, young business tycoon and hereditary CEO of Lexcorp Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) has plans of his own regarding the Man of Steel…
Audiences hoping for something in the vein of a Marvel movie likely got a rude awakening from Batman v Superman. Zack Snyder's superhero films, going as far back as Watchmen, are very serious, and at times very grim. This is a stark contrast to what we get from Marvel Studios, and also Fox's X-Men movies. Those various superhero franchises (Iron Man, X-Men, Captain America, etc.) have all found their own balance between action blockbuster and comedy. That comedy is more important than a lot of people think. While I've always maintained superhero stories can be more than simple escapist tales about people punching each other, people should also be able to have fun when they see these movies. And that fun pays dividends. For proof, look no further than Deadpool, a movie made for $58 million that went on to make $745 million worldwide.
Fun doesn't mean belittling the story or universe, either. There's a moment in Batman v Superman when Batman saves Martha Kent (Diane Lane), and tells her "I'm a friend of your son." She replies with a simple: "I figured. The cape…" There are precious few moments like this in the movie. But humor and levity are such valuable storytelling tools, particularly in terms of endearing the characters to us. And they've largely been cast aside in Batman v Superman. The notion that levity somehow takes away from a movie's epic factor, or even it's "dark tone," is simply a fallacy. Cast in point: Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. Those films weren't funny, per se. But they had little moments of levity that made the dark and chaotic stuff that much more impactful. By comparison, this movie feels like darkness on top of darkness.
The movie also has slow build-up to the confrontation between the two titular characters. This results in the first half of the proceedings being flat-out boring at times. We get a lot of good information regarding the characters and their world. But between the bleak and dreary look these movies have been given, and the lack of levity or fun, I can see many a casual moviegoer falling asleep here. Batman v Superman tries to slap a band-aid on this problem with some nightmare sequences in which Batman fights against a tyrannical Superman. While they do have a certain appeal, they contribute little to the actual story, and end up being more frustrating than anything else.
But let's not pile on, here. The movie isn't devoid of positives by any means. Batman fans jumped all over the casting of Ben Affleck like a pack of rabid dogs, and perhaps justifiably so. But as a lifelong Batman buff, I say Affleck gets a passing grade as The Dark Knight. I maintain Affleck wasn't a bad choice for Daredevil either. Both Daredevil and Batman v Superman had problems. In the case of Daredevil, Affleck took the heat for those flaws because he was the face of the film. Hopefully, history won't point the finger at him again.
Jesse Eisenberg is partially channelling Heath Ledger's Joker in his portrayal of Lex Luthor. That's fine, I suppose. Once he gets into full blown supervillain mode, he's very good. To those of us who saw him in The Social Network, that should be no surprise. Heck, the Lex Luthor we see here isn't unlike Mark Zuckerberg, really.
Perhaps the single best aspect of Batman v Superman is that Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) gets put over like a million bucks. In my theater, when she finally showed up in costume, the audience cheered. That's a hell of a sign. I'd never seen Gal Gadot before, but she carries herself well in the role. This obviously bodes well for a Wonder Woman movie.
As one might have guessed with the presence of Doomsday, this movie goes the Death of Superman route. On paper it sounds risky. But it works on the screen, particularly in setting up a Justice League movie. Superman's death can galvanize the other heroes into working together for the greater good. What's more, the fight with Doomsday is amazing. It's almost as if they met their entire action quota with that one fight. They also seemingly learned their lesson from Man of Steel, and didn't destroy an entire city this time.
There will be lessons to learn from Batman v Superman as well. The biggest one being not taking things so damn seriously. Not every superhero movie needs to conform to the Marvel formula. But it would be silly not to learn from the success of something that spawned an entire cinematic universe. Batman v Superman should have been a fanboy classic for the ages. While it's not quite as bad as it's been made out to be, what we got was definitely not that. Frankly, that's a crime. All the tools were there, but they couldn't get the job done. As a long time DC Comics fan, that's an awful miscarriage of justice.
Maybe that should have been the title.
Images courtesy of rottentomatoes.com.
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This entry was posted in Movies and tagged Amy Adams, Atlas Entertainment, Batfleck, Batman, Ben Affleck, Cruel and Unusual Films, Daredevil (2003 film), DC Comics, DC Entertainment, Deadpool (2016 film), Diane Lane, Doomsday (DC Comics), film reviews, Gal Gadot, Heath Ledger, Henry Cavill, Jesse Eisenberg, Justice League, Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, Marvel, Marvel Studios, movie reviews, RatPac Entertainment, Rob Siebert, Superman, The Death of Superman, Warner Bros. Pictures, Wonder Woman on 03/29/2016 by primaryignition.
A Review of The Flash S2E6 – Zoom Ends Barry's Run?
This was a big episode. How do you know? Because they didn't have any time for that plot thread with Iris' mom. I'm hoping that has something to do with something at one point. Otherwise, what the hell was the point?
But again, no time for that crap this week. Things are goin' straight to hell…
Ponderings From The Flash, S2E6:
Wells: "You're my joy, Jesse Quick." Ahhhh, how about that? Wells' daughter is Jesse Quick. There's something to look forward to.
In the old DC Universe, Jesse Quick was a supporting player in the Flash comic book. The daughter of Golden Age hero Johnny Quick, Jesse became one of Wally West's partners before changing her hero identity to Liberty Belle.
I can only assume Jesse knows about her powers, if only because Zoom came looking for her. Given how that fight between Zoom and Barry went (more on that later), they may need her sooner than later.
Obviously, the "Arrowverse" is expanding. With Legends of Tomorrow on the horizon, and The Flash still going strong, that's a good thing.
The team enlists Linda Park's help in setting a trap for Zoom. This was a bad idea, and even the heroes knew it. You never intentionally put innocents in jeopardy. That's got to be in the first chapter of the superhero rule book.
On the plus side, it's nice to see the Linda Park character fleshed out a little more. This as the first episode where I really took the time to study how Malese Jow portrays her. She now seems like she has her own distinct personality, as opposed to just being somebody in the background.
She also had two really good lines this week: "I've made out with The Flash," and in reference to Zoom, "You can't fight that thing. It's a monster."
Also, now she knows Barry is The Flash. Barry's got a lot of strings attached at this point. That could come back to bite him, specifically when it comes to his adopted father…
Barry admits to Joe that he's been having trouble being happy since he failed to save his mother from the Reverse-Flash. Joe tells him to do his best to be happy here and now. Grant Gustin and Jesse L. Martin have become really good at these father/son scenes. And it led to an awesome moment between Barry and Patty. Scenes like this make me wonder if Joe's going to get killed off at some point. His death would be so impactful for all the heroes, Barry and Iris especially.
The Flash faces off with Zoom for the first time. Obviously Zoom has a scary quality to him. A little less scary when you realize they're sort of channeling Cobra Commander and Shredder with his voice. But still, he's a very effective big bad for the season.
This fight reminded me of the Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader fight from The Empire Strikes Back. The good guy has the heart and the will, but the bad guy simply has too much power and experience. As such, The Flash got his ass kicked, and he was humiliated in front of his allies. I'm not sure how much Zoom knows about Barry's life, but having Zoom drag Barry in front of his father would have been a nice cap-off to that sequence.
When Zoom stabbed Barry, originally I thought the wound was in his heart. Needless to say, that would have complicated things. But as we'd soon learn, the wound was in his spine. So what does The Flash do when you take away his legs? In the comics, we've seen a version of Barry on a motorcycle. But I doubt they take that route here. I've got a feeling Barry gets his legs back next week via super healing or something like that.
Robert Queen is the Arrow of Earth-2. During a flashback scene on Earth-2, Harrison Wells hears that Robert Queen, Oliver Queen's father on Arrow, was the one who donned the hood on that world. That was a really cool little Easter egg.
Image 1 from nerdist.com. Image 2 from ibtimes.com. Image 3 from ign.com.
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This entry was posted in Television and tagged Arrow, Arrowverse, Barry Allen, DC Comics, DC Entertainment, Grant Gustin, Harrison Wells, Iris West, Jesse L. Martin, Jesse Quick, Joe West, Linda Park, Malese Jow, Professor Zoom, Rob Siebert, Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, television, television reviews, The CW, The Flash, The Flash (TV Series), TV, TV reviews on 11/10/2015 by primaryignition.
A Supergirl S1E3 Review – Calling in the Cousin
This week I stumbled across a story in USA Today about Supergirl's audience thus far. The article cites Nielsen statistics which say Supergirl draws a 51 percent male audience. Naturally, the other 49 percent is female. That's huge for a superhero show. Granted, it's not that far ahead of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which draws a 53/47 ratio, or Gotham, which does 57/43.
Long story short, Supergirl seems to be doing exactly what people hoped it would: Bringing in female viewers. Needless to say, that's a great thing.
Now, on to this week's episode…
Cat Grant conducts a brief interview with Supergirl. I liked that Supergirl kept her distance from Cat here, which almost helps with my suspension of disbelief about the whole glasses disguise. Much like Superman and Clark Kent, it seems that's one of those things fans are just going to have to live with.
The newspeg she went with was that Supergirl and Superman are cousins. I'm not sure why that's such a big deal, quite frankly. It seems like common sense that they'd be related somehow.
Alex calls Kara out about liking Jimmy Olsen. At the risk of coming off like Jeb "Supergirl is pretty hot" Bush, Melissa Benoist's awkward giggle is adorable. There's that girl-next-door appeal we've talked about.
Winn sets up a secret office for Supergirl-related activities in the office. I call BS on this one. In an office full of reporters, nobody notices all that tech is there? And nobody ever goes into that room? C'mon, now.
Reactron makes Supergirl a pawn in his quest for vengeance against Superman. Reactron came off pretty well in this episode. The suit looked cool, and Chris Browning did a hell of a job when the mask was off. I'd love to see more of Reactron as the series progresses.
Superman saves Kara in her second fight with Reactron. Thus far, we're striking a very delicate balance with Superman's presence on this show. He's obviously impacting the proceedings, and in this episode Winn even found out the Clark Kent secret. But we've never seen his face, and he has yet to actually become a full-fledged character on the show. So where do you draw the line? He saved Kara in the episode, and apparently they can instant message. But can she somehow talk to him on camera? Will they ever team up somehow?
We get our first look inside Maxwell Lord's tech empire. It must be nice having people call you "Mr. Lord." The guy already has a huge ego, but they you throw that in…
Lucy Lane, Jimmy Olson's ex, appears on the show, played by Jenna Dewan-Tatum. Lucy Lane, Lois' sister, tends to complicate things when she shows up. In the comics she did indeed date Jimmy Olsen, and for a time was actually the unstable Superwoman. In Lois and Clark, she dated John Corben before he became Metallo.
I expect more of the same here, especially with her coming between this odd Kara/Jimmy romance. I buy Jimmy more as Kara's big brother than her love interest. Hopefully they'll give this a little more time to develop, so it actually has some meat to it.
Image 1 from designtrend.com. Image 2 from superherohype.com. Images 3 and 4 from comicbook.com.
This entry was posted in Television and tagged Cat Grant, CBS, DC Comics, DC Entertainment, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Jimmy Olsen, Lucy Lane, Melissa Benoist, Reactron, Rob Siebert, Supergirl, Supergirl (2015 TV series), Supergirl Fight or Flight Review, Superman, television, television reviews, TV, TV reviews, USA Today, Winslow Schott on 11/10/2015 by primaryignition.
A Supergirl, S1E2 Review – Fighting Like A Girl
Supergirl kept most of its momentum going this week, and we even got a surprising confrontation that could very well have been saved for the season finale. All in all, a fairly strong episode.
There are still some bothersome ticks hanging on from last week's pilot episode. For instance, Melissa Benoist still needs to work on conveying exertion when she's lifting something heavy. Right now it just sounds like an empty scream.
On the flip side, I like that they have Melissa bending her knees before she takes off. It makes the whole flying thing see a little more believable. Of all things, it's actually reminiscent of the old Max Fleischer cartoons.
But all in all, we upped the intrigue in this episode, and that's exactly what they needed to do here.
Cat Grant wants a one-on-one interview with Supergirl. I expected this. The Superman/Lois Lane interview is something a lot of people remember from Superman: The Movie. So it makes sense to do it here.
It's irritating that they keep softening the focus when they do a close-up on Calista. That's a trick sometimes done in TV to hide the wrinkles on an actor's face. I really wish they wouldn't do that, especially on a show that's deemed as feminist as Supergirl. I don't think Calista's age is a secret. So what's the big deal?
James Olsen advises Kara about doing an interview with Cat Grant, talks about the glasses disguise. The lack of practicality in the glasses disguise is something that plagues the Superman mythos to this day, and it's going to plague Supergirl. The line about Cat "not really looking" at Kara is BS. At least people are used to suspending their disbelief about it.
So, are we moving toward a romance between Jimmy (He's not James. He's Jimmy.) and Kara? I'm not sure how I feel about that. But the exchanges they had in this episode were good. The line about Jimmy moving to National City (*gag*) to become his own man was endearing, as was Kara's response about it being an honor to be part of a team.
At the urging of Hank Henshaw, Alex exposes Kara's weakness at fighting. I like when they do stuff like this with the Superman characters. It makes sense, and it made for some nice scenes between Kara and Alex. Granted, it also made for some hokey dialogue (What was that about hiding from the popcorn popper?). But it got us a little more invested in Alex, which is obviously important.
Kara faces off against her aunt, Alura's twin sister Astra. This was a surprise. The reveal and the subsequent fight could have been the midseason finale, or even the season finale. Obviously they'll fight again, though. When they do, they need to work on not making it look like the girls are on wires. I'm sure that's not easy. But something like that can take you right out of the show.
Peter Facinelli makes his first appearance as Maxwell Lord. In the DCU, Maxwell Lord has been both a heartless villain and a ruthless businessman of sorts. I'm definitely interested to see what kind of Max we get here.
Kara is reunited with her mother Alura via interactive hologram. I believe this practice is what they call "Brando-ing."
Images from CBS.com.
This entry was posted in Television and tagged Alura Zor El, Calista Flockhart, Cat Grant, CBS, DC Comics, DC Entertainment, Hank Henshaw, Jimmy Olsen, Kara Zor El, Laura Benanti, Maxwell Lord, Mehcad Brooks, Melissa Benoist, Peter Facinelli, Rob Siebert, Supergirl, Supergirl (2015 TV series), television, television reviews, TV, TV reviews on 11/02/2015 by primaryignition.
A Supergirl S1E1 Review – Keep It Simple, Supergirl
***WARNING: Spoilers lay ahead for the pilot episode of Supergirl.***
People are understandably excited about Supergirl. In essence, the character is getting the same treatment Green Arrow and The Flash are getting on The CW. This isn't a prequel like Smallville or Gotham (Blech). This is Supergirl, flights and tights, in all her glory. On a major network, no less.
The pilot episode of Supergirl is charming in its simplicity. It lays everything out with fairly broad strokes, which is fine for now. We have our hero, her supporting cast, a place for villains to come from, and our big bad for the season. There's a lot of ground to explore, and they've got a whole season to do it.
So let's do what we love to do around here: Pick stuff apart…
Melissa Benoist plays Kara Zor El, a.k.a. Supergirl. This was great casting. Benoist has fantastic girl next-door appeal, and seems like she was somehow custom-built to be a TV star. It seemed like she was set for stardom on Glee before that show took an even bigger nosedive in quality. Either way, she makes a fantastic Supergirl. She'll obviously need some time to break into the role and truly make it her own, as most actors do. But give her enough time, and she'll pull it off.
Supergirl is widely being heralded as a feminist TV show, and a celebration of girl power. As a male fan, I'm not threatened or dissuaded by that at all. Despite all the superhero movies that have come out in the last two decades, we have yet to see one dedicated to Wonder Woman, Black Widow, or any other female hero. If Supergirl is successful, it could open some doors in that respect, and bring in new fans.
Calista Flockhart plays Cat Grant, head of CatCo Worldwide. Cat Grant was almost one-dimensional in how she was written here. Granted, this is only the pilot. At certain points in the comic books, the character had some nice depth that I'd love to see explored here. But that doesn't mean we can't make her a villain. Several years ago during Sterling Gates' run on Supergirl, Cat was essentially made the J. Jonah Jameson to Kara's Spider-Man. Using The Daily Planet as an outlet, Cat was able to turn much of Metropolis against the Girl of Steel. It wouldn't be far-fetched to imagine that happening on this show.
Incidentally, I loved her little rant about the word "girl." That was really well written.
Kara becomes aligned with her sister Alex, Hank Henshaw, and the Department of Extranormal Operations to face fugitives from a Kryptonian prison. This seems like a cue from Arrow and The Flash. On those shows, both heroes have a team around them that helps them with logistics and what not. It makes sense, at least as far as the first season is concerned. The Fort Rozz angle is also very similar to what we've seen on The Flash. On that show, the same freak accident that gave Barry Allen his speed also created various metahumans. On Supergirl, the arrival of Kara's shuttle accidentally released various prisoners from the Phantom Zone. This begs the question of why those prisoners are only surfacing now. But again, it's only the pilot.
Also, in the DC Comics Universe, Hank Henshaw is the evil Cyborg Superman. Just throwing that out there.
Kara works alongside Winn Schott, who she later reveals her secret to. On the subject of supervillains, in the DCU, Winslow Schott is one of the incarnations of the villainous Toyman. Perhaps unrequited love drives Schott to madness?
While Superman's presence is felt, he is never fully seen on camera. I was excited when I heard how Superman would be dealt with on this show. Essentially, it's the same way Veep deals with the President of the United States. The character's influence is felt on the show, but we never see him. I'm pleased they didn't do anything stupid to Superman, like kill him or banish him to the Phantom Zone. But this episode leaves me wondering why Kara doesn't have more of a direct relationship with her cousin. You'd think he's be the one person she'd want to talk to about superheroics and what not.
From a creative standpoint, the reason for keeping Superman out of the show is obvious: He draws attention away from Supergirl. But I'd like to see some reason given as to why she can apparently only communicate with him through other people.
Image 2 from youtube.com. Image 3 from moviepilot.com. Image 4 from cinemablend.com.
This entry was posted in Television and tagged Arrow, Calista Flockhart, CBS, David Harewood, DC Comics, DC Entertainment, Glee, Hank Henshaw, Jimmy Olsen, Kara Zor El, Krypton, Mehcad Brooks, Melissa Benoist, Rob Siebert, Supergirl, Supergirl (2015 TV series), Supergirl costume, Superman, The Flash (TV Series), Toyman, TV, TV reviews, Winn Schott on 10/27/2015 by primaryignition.
A Review of The Flash S2E2 – When Worlds Collide
The Flash remains, in my humble opinion, the best superhero show to hit the airwaves in years. As we're getting into it's second season, it continues to be enjoyable. And this plotline involving Earth-2 has some great potential.
But, that being said, this week's episode was underwhelming. Sadly, much of it has to do with Jay Garrick, our Flash of Earth-2.
Teddy Sears does his first full episode as Jay Garrick. This isn't Teddy's first time around the block, but he was pretty wooden in this episode. He's got a good look, but I don't see a lot of chemistry between he and Grant Gustin or Danielle Panabaker. But of course, this is only his first episode. Let's give him some time to get comfortable in the role. And let's hope he gets it quickly. For obvious reasons, it's looking like Jay is going to be a big part of this season.
Jay also needs to stop calling Barry "kid." You're The Flash, man. Don't be condescending.
Six months after Ronnie Raymond's alleged death, Caitlin appears to be crushing on Jay. Um…is six months enough time to get over the death of your husband? Mrs. Primary Ignition says no. But then again, Ronnie was gone for so long that maybe it was easier for her to get re-accustomed to life without him. I imagine that's going to make things awkward when he comes back again…
Shantel VanSanten plays Patty Spivot, a cop dying to get on Joe West's metahuman task force. Very happy to see a new love interest for Barry. Patty Spivot is also his love interest in the comics right now, if I'm not mistaken. Obviously Barry is going to end up with Iris in the end. But I've always found Iris to be extremely annoying. There's nothing wrong with how Candice Patton plays the part. But to me Iris has always been written very whiny and irritating. That's why I've consistently rooted for Barry to end up with Caitlin. But Patty Spivot works too. Shantel VanSanten was charming in the role. She's a welcome addition to the cast.
Cisco tells Professor Stein about his visions, makes him promise to keep it a secret. Stein appears to have a seizure near the end of the episode. Cisco's logic in telling Stein keep his mouth shut about thing makes no sense. He wants these awful visions to go away, but he doesn't want Stein or anyone else to help him? From a drama standpoint, tt would have made more sense if Stein had his little episode as he and Cisco were about to confide in the rest of the team. Just my opinion.
Also, that "I get a vibe" line was nice a little wink.
Zoom recruits Eddie Slick, a.k.a. Sand Demon, to kill The Flash. Sand Demon is one of the few comic book super villains I'm not familiar with, but Kett Turton did fine playing a bad guy. Still, I couldn't help but see him as a poor man's version of Marvel's Sandman. Based on how his fight with Barry and Jay ended, I'm wondering if we'll see him again, as we did with the various villains last season.
The episode ends with what appears to be an alternate-Earth version of Harrison Wells. So…is that the real Harrison Wells? Or is that future Eobard Thawne disguised as Harrison Wells? Also, was that Earth-2? Regardless, this could get messy.
Image 1 from designtrend.com. Image 2 from thegg.net. Image 3 from bamsmackpow.com.
This entry was posted in Television and tagged Barry Allen, Caitlin Snow, Candice Patton, Cisco Ramon, Danielle Panabaker, DC Comics, DC Entertainment, Grant Gustin, Harrison Wells, Iris West, Jay Garrick, Kett Turton, Martin Stein, Mrs. Primary Ignition, Professor Zoom, Rob Siebert, Ronnie Raymond, Sand Demon (DC Comics), Teddy Sears, television reviews, The Flash, The Flash (TV Series), The Flash of Two Worlds, TV, TV reviews on 10/13/2015 by primaryignition.
A Review of The Flash S2E1 – Excitement, Frustration, and Alternate Earths
***Warning: Spoilers lay ahead for The Flash, Season 2, Episode 1***
Last season, The Flash turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. It wasn't without its hiccups, of course. But in the end, it turned out that DC's television universe may be more interesting than the cinematic one it's trying to get off the ground. Grant Gustin plays a pretty good everyman, and the show proved that not all superhero shows don't necessarily need to be grim or gritty to succeed.
Let's hope that success can continue this season. This episode was fine, but also surprisingly frustrating…
Our season 2 premiere reveals that Ronnie Raymond apparently died while helping The Flash stop the black hole in the season 1 finale. I found this development pretty lame. We've already done the whole "grieving over Ronnie" thing. This feels like we're retracing steps from last season. Granted, this is a superhero story. It's entirely possible that Ronnie is alive and well somewhere. But then we're just retracing our steps yet again with the whole "finding Ronnie" angle.
Still, Barry Allen pushing everybody away was a natural reaction to Ronnie's death, if not a little textbook superhero. I also love that Caitlin doesn't blame Barry for what happened. Personally, I've always liked the idea of Barry and Caitlin being together much more than Barry and Iris. With them both being scientists, it makes more sense. Hell, she even forgave him for his role in her husband's death! She obviously cares about him deeply. Why not explore this?
In his living will, Harrison Wells inexplicably confesses to the murder of Nora Allen, resulting in Henry Allen being released from prison. This a trap. It has to be. There's no way Wells, in defeat, would simply give Barry the one thing he wants more than anything. So what's the punchline?
Also, I call BS on the whole "I have to leave so you can be The Flash" thing. That makes no sense at all. How would it hinder Barry to have his father there to encourage him? What's more, Henry MAKES Barry tell him it's okay to go away after 14 years in prison. Talk about a dick move. Between this and the Ronnie Raymond thing, it feels like they're writing around the actors' availability. But is that even the case?
Adam Copeland, a.k.a. WWE's Edge, plays Atom Smasher. I've actually never seen Copeland act in any environment outside of WWE. I was pleasantly surprised. He's quite good at it. But that's not really a surprise, considering what a sadistic jackass he played during the last several years of his wrestling career. He's got a really cool grizzled bad guy voice too.
Barry and the others construct a "Flash-Signal" to summon Atom Smasher for a confrontation. Cisco: "I think I saw it in a comic book somewhere." This was an eye-roller. If you want to wink at the audience about Batman, then at least be clever.
Atom Smasher reveals a person named "Zoom" told him to kill The Flash. Obviously they're building toward the introduction of Professor Zoom, here. I'm curious as to how they'll do that. For non-comic book readers, Zoom was an alias of Eobard Thawne, who died last season. The line about Zoom taking Atom Smasher home was also curious. Is this home an alternate Earth, perhaps? Speaking of which…
Jay Garrick makes his on-screen debut in the closing moments of the episode. This is definitely exciting. Jay Garrick, the Flash of Earth-2, opens a lot of new doors for this season, and the series overall.
I can only assume we'll see Barry travel to Earth-2 at some point, presumably by way of the cosmic treadmill. We have very little to go on at this point, obviously. But as a sucker for alternate Earth storylines, I'm very anxious to see what they do with Jay Garrick, and whatever Earth-2 characters pop up.
Image 1 from ign.com. Image 2 from forbes.com. Image 3 from comicbookresources.com.
This entry was posted in Television and tagged Rob Siebert, Earth-2 (DC Comics), The Flash, Barry Allen, TV, DC Entertainment, television, The Flash (TV Series), The CW, Grant Gustin, Edge (WWE), The Flash Season 2, Adam Copeland, Atom Smasher, Ronnie Raymond, Caitlin Snow, Bat-Signal, Harrison Wells, Jay Garrick, Cosmic Treadmill on 10/07/2015 by primaryignition.


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/**
Retrieves a list of extra attributes defined for the specified product type.
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Retrieves the details of an extra attribute definition for the specified product type.
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Assigns a defined extra attribute to the product type based on the information supplied in the request.
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Update the definition of an extra attribute for the specified product type.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


"Pancreatic beta cells were found to have leaky RyR2s, which were disrupting the function of mitochondria that provide cells with energy required for insulin release. The dysfunction was consistent with mitochondrial alterations that have been described in pancreatic beta cells from patients with type 2 diabetes," said Dr. Santulli.
The study was funded by grants from the American Heart Association (13POST16810041), the Schaefer Foundation, the Phillip Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health (R01HL061503, R01HL102040, and R01AR060037).
Dr. Marks is a consultant and board member of ARMGO Pharma, Inc., which is targeting RyR channels for therapeutic purposes. The other authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interest.


This course is offered on-campus and online.
LIB 010 fulfills Information Competency Graduation Proficiency requirement.
LIB 010 fulfills General Education Area E requirement.
NOTE: Students cannot get credit for both LIB 10 and LIB 10H. Enrollment in the Honors Transfer Project is required for LIB 10H.
This course covers the basic elements of information competency by introducing students to the nature of research and the role of the library in research, including finding, analyzing, organizing, and presenting information and the legal and ethical aspects of research. Students are introduced to a variety of informational resources including print, media, electronic formats and the World Wide.
SLO 1: Students will identify and critically evaluate appropriate resources.
SLO 2: When using information, students will correctly identify when citations are required.
SLO 3: Students will create correctly formatted citations in multiple formats.
I really wish I could have taken this course BEFORE English 1A because I could have provided high quality essays if I would have known how to use all these amazing resources.
The course even went above my expectations by far and gave knowledge that I did not expect to come from the course.
This hasn't been my favorite class but I can't deny that I've learned a lot.
Everything was really fun, actually. Some lessons I thought "awww man this is going to take forever, I don't want to do it" but once I got started they flew by.
It is the ability to recognize when you need information and then be able to find, evaluate, and use that information effectively. Library 10: Information Competency is a one-unit course that can help you develop these skills.
Is information competency a graduation requirement?
Yes. As of Fall 2006, students must fulfill an Information Competency proficiency requirement in order to graduate with an AA/AS degree. Library 10 fulfills this requirement.
Is there an Information Competency Proficiency Exam?
Yes, there is. Passing the exam is another way to fulfill the proficiency requirement. You must receive a score of at least 70% on the exam to fulfill the Information Competency proficiency requirement. It is administered through the Mission College Assessment Center and students currently enrolled in Library 10: Information Competency are not eligible to take the exam. For additional information about the exam, including links to study resources, please refer to the Information Proficiency Exam Student Guide.
Are there study resources for the Information Competency Proficiency Exam?
Yes. For additional information about the exam, including links to study resources, please refer to the Information Proficiency Exam Student Guide.
Are there any prerequisites for Library 10?
Students taking this course should be at or above the level for English 1A (English Composition), Reading 54 (Critical College Reading and Thinking), and Computer Applications 70 (Using MS Windows). Please note that students who are not eligible for these advisories may have trouble passing this course.
When should I take Library 10?
It is highly recommended that you take LIB 10 early in your college career - preferably in your first semester if you meet the above advisories. The research skills you develop in LIB 10 will help you in many of your courses.
Does this course have a required textbook?
This course does not have a required textbook, but supplemental reading will be assigned. All supplemental readings are available at no charge through Canvas, the Mission College Library resources, or the Web.
This is a one-unit course so that means there will not be much homework, right?
Wrong. Academic courses are assigned units based on the amount of time a student is expected to devote to learning per semester. For a one-unit course that meets once a week over the entire semester (16 weeks) the minimum is three hours of student work per week. This typically equals one hour in-class, plus two hours of study/homework per week. For an online course, the "in-class" time is added to the study/homework time, so a one unit course requires three hours of learning per week. The time commitment doubles for an eight week course.
What is the difference between the online course and the on-campus course?
The online course does not have weekly meetings, but the material covered and the time commitment is the same: three hours per week for the 16 week course and six hours per week for the eight week course. To find out if online learning is right for you, go to the Mission College Online Learning Web page.
Is the online course easier because we do not have to meet on-campus weekly?
Even though the online course does not have weekly face-to-face meetings, the time commitment per week is the same. For the online course, class material and lectures will be presented in a variety of formats, including PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, PDF documents, and video presentations with sound. Often students new to online learning perceive and expect online courses to be easy and involve little to no work on their part. This is a misperception, and in fact, online courses may be more demanding than a face-to-face course depending on the learning style of the student. Online courses are not recommended for all students. To find out if online learning is right for you, go to the Mission College Online Learning Web page.
Is the online course self-paced?
No. The online course is not self-paced. You will have weekly assignments with weekly due dates.
Is the online course conducted completely online?
Yes. The online course is conducted completely online. The primary mode of instruction is through the Canvas Learning Management System.
Does the online course have a mandatory on-campus orientation?
No. There is not a mandatory orientation for the online course.
What should I do if I am on a wait list?
If you are on a wait list for an on-campus course, please attend the first class meeting and if there are spaces available, students will be added in the order they appear on the wait list. If you are on a wait list for an online course, your instructor will contact students via email, in the order they appear on the wait list, as spaces become available. If you are on a wait list be sure to verify that your current email address is listed in My Mission Portal . Students will not be given add codes past the first class meeting for an on campus course, and past the first week for an online course. Please note that the order of the wait list is strictly followed.
Yes. The credit from Library 10 is transferable to the California State University system (CSU) and the University of California system (UC). It may also be transferable to other colleges and universities, but you must check with each individual institution.
Thank you for visiting the Library!


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