Three Wise Men

Gaspar, Balthasar, and Melchior, the three Wise Men or Magi, visited the Christ child in Bethlehem bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The three gifts had a spiritual meaning: gold as a symbol of kingship on earth, frankincense as a symbol of priestship, and myrrh (an embalming oil) as a symbol of death. Sometimes this is described more generally as gold symbolizing virtue, frankincense symbolizing prayer, and myrrh symbolizing suffering. All three are ordinary offerings given to a king. It has been suggested also by scholars that the "gifts" were medicinal rather than precious material for tribute. The three wise men were probably priests from Persia who traveled a long distance, perhaps 1,000 miles, on their pilgrimage to Bethlehem.

The Third Industrial Revolution

My first book, Threes, was available for a time in print. The process was print on demand. Print and bind one new book each time one book was ordered. It has and will continue to transform the publishing industry. So will e-books or digital versions of the same. 

In fact the digital revolution when expressed as digital manufacturing represents the third wave of the industrial revolution that began in Great Britain during the 18^th century and progressed to the United States as a second industrial revolution with the introduction of the assembly line.

In some ways this third industrial revolution, the digital one, reverses the mass production orientation of the assembly line.  It makes the manufacture of some items personal, customized, even unique, to the buyer or maker.

“As manufacturing goes digital, a third great change is now gathering pace. It will allow things to be made economically in smaller numbers, more flexibly and with a much lower input of labor, thanks to new materials, completely new processes such as 3D printing, easy-to-use robots and new collaborative manufacturing services available online. The wheel is almost coming full circle, turning away from mass manufacturing and towards much more individualized production.  And that in turn could bring some of the jobs back to rich countries that long ago lost them to the emerging world,” writes The Economist in 2012.

In the end the real benefit of digital manufacturing may be the jobs that remain in the hands of those who created the process.

The Utimate Threes Game: Rock, Paper, Scissors

This from Yahoo.

 “The question of how to win at rock-paper-scissors has, believe it or not, plagued mathematicians and game theorists for some time.

“While they previously had devised a theoretical answer to the question, an experiment by Zhijian Wang at Zhejiang University in China that used real players has revealed an interesting wrinkle to the original theory.

“In the experiment, Zhijian noticed that winning players tended to stick with their winning strategy, while losers tended to switch to the next strategy in the sequence of rock-paper-scissors, following what he calls ‘persistent cyclic flows.’

“Here's how it works in practice: Player A and Player B both start by using random strategies. If Player A uses rock and Player B uses paper, Player A loses. In the next round, Player A can assume that Player B will use paper again and should therefore use scissors to win. In the round after that, because Player B lost, Player A can assume that Player B will use the next strategy in the sequence — scissors — and Player A should then use rock, thus winning again.

“If you take the game on a theoretical level, the most mathematically sound way to play rock-paper-scissors is by choosing your strategy at random. Because there are three outcomes — a win, a loss, or a tie — and each strategy has one other strategy that it can beat and one other strategy that can beat it, and we don't care what strategy we win with, it makes the most sense to pick paper, rock, and scissors each one-third of the time. This is called the game's Nash Equilibrium.

“While the Nash Equilibrium should be the best strategy in real life, Zhijian found a decidedly different pattern when he and some other researchers recruited 72 students to play the game. They divided the pupils into 12 groups of six players and had them each play 300 rounds of rock-paper-scissors against each other. Zhijian also added a payout in proportion to the number of victories.”

Read more here.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/beat-anyone-rock-paper-scissors-002424689.html

Happiness Study Finds Three Sources

The semi-annual study on happiness, reported by Australia researchers who surveyed 60,000 individuals, indicates there is a golden triangle of happiness.  The study found three things are needed for a happy life.

“Financial security, a sense of purpose in life, and good personal relationships make up the ‘golden triangle’ of happiness,” they say.

Further, the report says, “Being part of an intimate relationship is the most vital component of wellbeing. Pets are no substitute for human beings….While money does not make us happy, a lack of it makes us miserable. Wellbeing rises up to about $100,000 a year, at which point its healing power drops off dramatically….People are happiest when they are active, and when they have a sense of purpose. Volunteers are amongst the happiest people, though conscripts are not.”

The report found fathers tended to be happier than men without children, but women's happiness stayed the same whether they had children or not.

The researchers said this could be because family was the greatest source of contentment and happiness for men throughout their lives, whereas women were able to maintain social connections beyond the family unit.

Threes and the Modern Story

The modern epic story has become one of incredible visual and audible force, a technology marvel. Look no further than the last Star Wars movie, “The Force Awakens,” to see the perfected evolution of the ages-old tale.

 

“The internal mechanics of myths may not have changed much over the years, but the technology used to impart them certainly has,” writes The Economist in December.

The Greeks told grand stories through the early epic poems of Homer and Hesiod from the 7th century BC, roughly. Homer’s (Greek) Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil’s (Roman) Aeneid are The Big Three classics. As in many epic stories of the same form that preceded Homer and Virgil and those that followed them, the hero makes a long journey, faces and defeats adversaries, and returns home transformed by his experience. That’s the basic three-part formula in the story line that’s been repeated for millennia, I described in my first book, Threes.

“In Homer’s day, legends were passed on in the form of dactylic hexameters: modern myth-makers refer computer graphics, special effects, 3D projections, surround sound and internet video distribution,” writes The Economist in its “Leaders” column describing The Disney Company’s rise to the top tier of modern epic storytellers.

The author says Disney starts with tropes, the first of three key elements in its modern storytelling. Tropes are Disney properties that draw on “well-worn devices of mythic structure to give their stories cultural resonance.”

Employing the capacity of its recent acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm, Disney unleashes its technology marvels with such force that Walt would surely turn a smile. Finally Disney’s toys, merchandise and theme parks complete the triad of the modern mythic story as business and cultural powerhouse.

Ultimately, states The Economist, “these modern myths are so compelling because they tap primordial human urges—for refuge, redemption and harmony….Similarly, modern myth-making, reliant though it is on new tools and techniques, is really just pushing the same old buttons in stone-age brains. That is something Walt Disney understood instinctively—and that the company he founded is now exploiting so proficiently.”

Three Benefits and Employment

Full-time employment in the U.S. continues to improve.  As available unemployed workers become scarcer, employers may be inclined to offer more as they select from a smaller pool.  The Big Three benefits of full-time employment that employers can provide their employees are pensions and retirement plans, healthcare insurance and unemployment insurance. 

All three areas are stressed.  Pensions, including Social Security, are being stretched by the wave of retiring, older workers who claim the benefit in retirement. Does the trend suggest employers and employees will pay a higher percentage of pay to the Social Security system in the future just to make ends meet? Health care costs, including insurance, continue to increase significantly year on year. Unemployment insurance payouts for laid off full-time employees, state to state, have been requested significantly during the last decade. 

What have been the responses by employers? First, they use part-time or contract employees to avoid paying some benefits.  Second, employers over time have significantly reduced the employer share of pension contributions and health care payments. Third, they have removed benefits. 

What then happens as we approach full employment?  My guess, not much changes even though, theoretically, labor has more leverage in an open market for talent.

Three Tips for Building Courage

From the new book by former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens, three tips for building courage and resilience are:

 

1. Let go of excuses.

 

2. Learn to control your breathing.

 

3. Write it down in order to analyze your fear objectively.