“Hieropraxis” combines the words “hieros” (meaning “sacred” in Greek) and “praxis” (meaning “practice” or “action”). Hieropraxis is thus a place to explore the practice of living a holy life, a life lived in the light of the knowledge of God revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ. A new word formed from two ancient ones, Hieropraxis reminds us that the faith once delivered to the saints can indeed be lived out, in all its richness and truth, in the present day.
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Shift - definition:
- verb (used with object)
1. to put (something) aside and replace it by another or others; change or exchange: to shift friends; to shift ideas.
2. to transfer from one place, position, person, etc., to another: to shift the blame onto someone else.
3. Automotive. to change (gears) from one ratio or arrangement to another.
- verb (used without object)
5. to move from one place, position, direction, etc., to another.
6. to manage to get along or succeed by oneself.
7. to get along by indirect methods; use any expediency, trick, or evasion to get along or succeed: He shifted through life.
8. to change gears in driving an automobile.
9. Ling. to undergo a systematic, especially phonetic, change.
10. to press a shift key, as on a typewriter keyboard.
11. Archaic. to change one's clothes.
- noun
12. a change or transfer from one place, position, direction, person, etc., to another: a shift in the wind.
13. a person's scheduled period of work, especially the portion of the day scheduled as a day's work when a shop, service, office, or industry operates continuously during both the day and night: She prefers the morning shift.
14. a group of workers scheduled to work during such a period: The night shift reported.
15. Baseball. a notable repositioning by several fielders to the left or the right of their normal playing position, an occasional strategy against batters who usually hit the ball to the same side of the field.
18. Football. a lateral or backward movement from one position to another, usually by two or more offensive players just before the ball is put into play.
19. Mining. a dislocation of a seam or stratum; fault.
20. Music. a change in the position of the left hand on the fingerboard in playing a stringed instrument.
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Shift 'key'
-to change from one case to another; "normal" is lower case; only at key times is the 'shift' key hit, that causes the letter to change..to upper case letter.
- shift key also changes punctuation
The shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters. In computing, a modifier key is a special key on a computer keyboard that modifies the normal action of another key when the two are pressed in combination.
What are my limits, and what is my sacrifice?
Aristotle
Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”
Excellence is an art, won by training and habituation (change). We do not act rightly because we have excellence. We rather have excellence because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle
Habituation
Habituation is a form of learning in which an organism decreases or ceases to respond to a stimulus after repeated presentations. Essentially, the organism learns to stop responding to a stimulus which is no longer biologically relevant.
For example, a novel sound in your environment, such as a new ring tone, may initially draw your attention or even become distracting. After you become accustomed to this sound, you pay less attention to the noise and your response to the sound will diminish. This diminished response is habituation.
Excellence is personal. It is something you either are or you are not.
The limits you place on yourself
The sacrifice you make to exceed your limits
IBM Canada to Japanese manufacturer...
Quality Control
IBM Canada Ltd. of Markham, Ont., ordered some parts from a new supplier in Japan. The company noted in its order that acceptable quality allowed for 1.5 per cent defects (a fairly high standard in North America at the time).
The Japanese sent the order, with a few parts packaged separately in plastic.
The accompanying letter said:
"We don't know why you want 1.5 per cent defective parts, but for your convenience, we've packed them separately."
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“Excellence... is a mindset that challenges the boundaries of self-induced limits, that point where you aspire to exceed your own expectations.” Lorrii Myers
"Seeking excellence means choosing to forge your own sword to cut through the limitations of your life.”
James Murphy
Story......MARIE CURIE
Born Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland, Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two different fields (physics and chemistry). Curie's efforts, with her husband Pierre Curie, led to the discovery of polonium and radium and, after Pierre's death, the development of X-rays. She died on July 4, 1934.
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On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings aimed at restoring Poland's independence (the most recent had been the January Uprising of 1863–65).This condemned the subsequent generation, including Maria, her elder sisters and her brother, to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.
Her parents were both teachers, and she was the youngest of five children. As a child Curie took after her father, Ladislas, a math and physics instructor.
The father was eventually fired by his Russian supervisors for pro-Polish sentiments, and forced to take lower-paying posts; the family also lost money on a bad investment, and eventually chose to supplement their income by lodging boys in the house. Maria's mother Bronisława operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school for girls; she resigned from the position after Maria was born.
Marie's mother died of tuberculosis in May 1878, when Maria was ten years old. Less than three years earlier, Maria's oldest sibling, Zofia, had died of typhus contracted from a boarder. Maria's father was an atheist; her mother—a devout Catholic. The deaths of Maria's mother and sister caused her to give up Catholicism and become agnostic.
After a collapse, possibly due to depression, she spent the following year in the countryside with relatives of her father, and the next year with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring.
A top student in her secondary school - Unable to enroll in a regular institution of higher education because she was a woman, she and her sister Bronisława became involved with the clandestine Flying University, a Polish patriotic institution of higher learning that admitted women students.
Both Curie and her sister Bronya dreamed of going to Paris to earn an official degree, but they lacked the financial resources to pay for more schooling. Undeterred, Curie worked out a deal with her sister. She would work to support Bronya while she was in Medical school and Bronya would return the favor after she completed her medical studies.
In connection with this, Maria took a position as governess: first as a home tutor in Warsaw; then for two years as a governess in Szczuki with a landed family, the Żorawskis, who were relatives of her father.
While working for the latter family, she fell in love with their son, Kazimierz Żorawski, a future eminent mathematician. His parents rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless relative, and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them.
Maria's loss of the relationship with Żorawski was tragic for both. He soon earned a doctorate and pursued an academic career as a mathematician, becoming a professor and rector of Kraków University.
Side note......Still, as an old man and a mathematics professor at the Warsaw Polytechnic, he would sit contemplatively before the statue of Maria Skłodowska which had been erected in 1935 before the Radium Institute that she had founded in 1932.
For roughly five years, Curie worked as a tutor and a governess. She used her spare time to study, reading about physics, chemistry and math. In 1891, Curie finally made her way to Paris where she enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris. She threw herself into her studies, but this dedication had a personal cost. With little money, Curie survived on buttered bread and tea, and her health sometimes suffered because of her poor diet.
Curie completed her master's degree in physics in 2 years in 1893 and earned another degree in mathematics the following year. Around this time, she received a commission to do a study on different types of steel and their magnetic properties. Curie needed a lab to work in, and a colleague introduced her to French physicist Pierre Curie. A romance developed between the brilliant pair, and they became a scientific dynamic duo.
Discoveries
Marie and Pierre Curie were dedicated scientists and completely devoted to one another. At first, they worked on separate projects. She was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered that uranium casts off rays, weaker rays than the X-rays found by Wilhelm Roentgen.
Curie took Becquerel's work a few steps further, conducting her own experiments on uranium rays. She discovered that the rays remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. The rays, she theorized, came from the element's atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and Curie herself coined the word radioactivity to describe the phenomena. Marie and Pierre had a daughter, Irene, in 1897, but their work didn't slow down.
Pierre put aside his own work to help Marie with her exploration of radioactivity. Working with the mineral pitchblende, the pair discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. They named the element polonium, after Marie's native country of Poland. They also detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende, and called that radium. In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram of pure radium, demonstrating its existence as a unique chemical element.
Science Celebrity
Marie Curie made history in 1903 when she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in physics. She won the prestigious honor along with her husband and Henri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity. With their Nobel Prize win, the Curies developed an international reputation for their scientific efforts, and they used their prize money to continue their research. They welcomed a second child, daughter Eve, the following year.
In 1906, Marie suffered a tremendous loss. Her husband Pierre was killed in Paris after he accidentally stepped in front of a horse-drawn wagon. Despite her tremendous grief, she took over his teaching post at the Sorbonne, becoming the institution's first female professor.
Curie received another great honor in 1911, winning her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was selected for her discovery of radium and polonium, and became the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes. While she received the prize alone, she shared the honor jointly with her late husband in her acceptance lecture.
Around this time, Curie joined with other famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Max Planck, to attend the first Solvay Congress in Physics. They gathered to discuss the many groundbreaking discoveries in their field. Curie experienced the downside of fame in 1911, when her relationship with her husband's former student, Paul Langevin, became public. Curie was derided in the press for breaking up Langevin's marriage. The press' negativity towards Curie stemmed at least in part from rising xenophobia in France.
When World War I broke out in 1914, Curie devoted her time and resources to helping the cause. She championed the use of portable X-ray machines in the field, and these medical vehicles earned the nickname "Little Curies." After the war, Curie used her celebrity to advance her research. She traveled to the United States twice— in 1921 and in 1929— to raise funds to buy radium and to establish a radium research institute in Warsaw.
Final Days and Legacy
All of her years of working with radioactive materials took a toll on Curie's health. She was known to carry test tubes of radium around in the pocket of her lab coat. In 1934, Curie went to the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, France, to try to rest and regain her strength. She died there on July 4, 1934, of aplastic anemia, which can be caused by prolonged exposure to radiation.
Marie Curie made many breakthroughs in her lifetime. She is the most famous female scientist of all time, and has received numerous posthumous honors. In 1995, her and her husband's remains were interred in the Panthéon in Paris, the final resting place of France's greatest minds. Curie became the first and only woman to be laid to rest there.
Curie also passed down her love of science to the next generation. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie followed in her mother's footsteps, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Joliot-Curie shared the honor with her husband Frédéric Joliot for their work on their synthesis of new radioactive elements.
Today several educational and research institutions and medical centers bear the Curie name, including the Institute Curie and the Pierre and Marie Curie University, both in Paris.
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What are my limits, and what is my sacrifice?
Story....BILL GATES
10,000 hours by age 20
1 of only 50 people in world
52, 560 hours in six years
34, 689 hours awake
1/3 of life on a computer
What are my limits, and what is my sacrifice?
Story.....Charolette Brown
Diagrams:
Charlotte Brown, blind pole vaulter, finishes fourth at state meet
Nick Zaccardi May 9, 2014, 4:10 PM EDT
A legally blind 16-year-old pole vaulter tied for fourth in the Texas high school Class 3A state championship meet Friday.
Charlotte Brown, a junior from Emory Rains High School, cleared 11 feet but missed all three of her attempts at 11 feet, 6 inches, according to reports.
The New York Times and The Associated Press profiled Brown before she finished eighth at last year’s state meet.
Brown was born with normal vision but developed problems while an infant. She has no depth perception, sees no color and cannot distinguish shapes. Her range of vision is similar to looking through a tiny straw. She reads Braille and now has a seeing eye dog. Brown cleared 10-6 at last year’s state meet. Another blind pole vaulter, Aria Ottmueller, reportedly finished sixth at an Arizona state high school meet last year.
© 2014 Dr Laurie Vervaecke
