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the violin students I studied at the Berlin academy found their training so tiring that they would often take a midday nap between their morning and afternoon practice sessions. People who are just learning to focus on their practice won’t be able to maintain it for several hours. Instead, they’ll need to start out with much shorter sessions and gradually work up. The advice I offered to Per Holmlöv in this area can be applied to just about anyone who is getting started on deliberate practice: Focus and concentration are crucial, I wrote, so shorter training sessions with clearer goals are the best way to develop new skills faster. It is better to train at 100 percent effort for less time than at 70 percent effort for a longer period. Once you find you can no longer focus effectively, end the session. And make sure you get enough sleep so that you can train with maximum concentration. Per took my
Peak
Anders Ericsson, Robert Pool
Paine offered “simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense” of the American condition—that it would only deteriorate should some temporary reconciliation be achieved. To back this contention Paine cited several conventional arguments, all demonstrating the divergence of British and American interests. But perhaps his most compelling point—not much noticed since—reminded Americans that blood had recently been spilled, and with its loss American affection for the “mother country” had drained away. American passions had been engaged in the struggle, and the passion that was directed toward Britain was hatred. The conclusion to this analysis seemed obvious: “Reconciliation is now a fallacious dream.”19 Much of what Paine wrote had already been said in the nine months following Lexington. The events of those months, giving evidence of the stubbornness and hostility of king and Parliament, made belief in reconciliation difficult to sustain. Common Sense helped Americans see just how far they had come in the struggle to protect their rights, made them see that they could not go back to the old relationship of 1763. If Paine was right not the king, nor the Parliament, nor the English people had any desire for the old arrangements. A part of what Paine was saying had been said by pamphleteers for a dozen years—there was a conspiracy afoot to enslave the colonies. But Paine went farther: he showed that the conspiracy inhered in the very structure of the Anglo-American arrangements. Because the conspiracy could not be separated from the monarchy or from the British constitution, the Americans, it seemed, had no choice. They must declare their independence. A declaration of independence might be only common sense, but Paine clearly believed that it would be more—it would indeed be a break in history. He told Americans of the importance of what they were doing in only a few sentences: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now.”
The Glorious Cause
Robert Middlekauff
The hidden reality I aim to expose is that for over fifty years, all-out thermonuclear war—an irreversible, unprecedented, and almost unimaginable calamity for civilization and most life on earth—has been, like the disasters of Chernobyl, Katrina, the Gulf oil spill, Fukushima Daiichi, and before these, World War I, a catastrophe waiting to happen, on a scale infinitely greater than any of these. And that is still true today. No policies in human history have more deserved to be recognized as immoral. Or insane. The story of how this calamitous predicament came about and how and why it has persisted for over half a century is a chronicle of human madness. Whether Americans, Russians, and other humans can rise to the challenge of reversing these policies and eliminating the danger of near-term extinction caused by their own inventions and proclivities remains to be seen. I choose to join with others in acting as if that is still possible.
The Doomsday Machine
Daniel Ellsberg
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