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.

Prouder, Stronger, Better

President Ronald Reagan made us feel better, even though times then, like now, did not always feel better.  Here’s the text from a re-election campaign ad in 1984:

“

It's morning again in America. Today more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country's history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years. This afternoon 6,500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just four years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It's morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?

”

Warren Buffett's Three Secrets

Warren Buffett is in the news this week with his now-famous letter to shareholders.  In an interview article published in December, Tony Robbins quotes Warren Buffet’s three secrets to wealth. They are worth repeating.

"When I asked Warren Buffett — what are the secrets to your wealth, he said it's three things. He said, No. 1, it's being born in America. No. 2 is good genes, so I live long enough, and No. 3, it's compound interest. Compound interest — people have no idea the power that it really has."

Three Things That Could Destroy Humanity

Stephen Hawking may be most famous for his work on black holes and gravitational singularities, but the world-renowned physicist has also become known for his outspoken ideas about things that could destroy human civilization.

Hawking is part of a small but growing group of scientists who have expressed concerns about "strong" artificial intelligence (AI)—intelligence that could equal or exceed that of a human. "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," Hawking told the BBC in December 2014. The statement was in response to a question about a new AI voice-synthesizing system that Hawking has been using.

Hawking's warnings echo those of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, who has called AI humanity's "biggest existential threat." Last month, Hawking, Musk and dozens of other scientific bigwigs signed an open letter describing the risks, as well as the benefits, of AI. "Because of the great potential of AI, it is important to research how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls," the scientists wrote in the letter.  

If our machines don't kill us, we might kill ourselves. Hawking now believes that human aggression might destroy civilization. "The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all.”

For example, a major nuclear war would likely end civilization and could wipe out the human race, Hawking added. When asked which human quality he would most like to magnify, Hawking chose empathy, because "it brings us together in a peaceful, loving state."

But Hawking had made ominous warnings even before these recent ones. Back in 2010, Hawking said that, if intelligent alien life exists, it may not be that friendly toward humans

If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans," Hawking said.  

       

From the threat of nefarious AI, to advanced aliens, to hostile humans, Hawking's outlook for humanity is looking pretty grim.

http://www.livescience.com/49952-stephen-hawking-warnings-to-humanity.html

Religion and Moral Courage

Researchers in a contemporary project called Explaining Religion spent three years collecting information about the influence of religion on morality. “In particular, the project’s researchers have studied the ideas of just deserts, of divine disapproval and of the nature of religious ritual. One theory of the origin of religion is that it underpins the extraordinary capacity for collaboration that led to the rise of Homo sapiens. A feature of many religions is the idea that evil is divinely punished and virtue is rewarded. Cheats or the greedy, in other words, get their just deserts. The selflessness which that belief encourages might help explain religions’ evolution.” 

The late ethicist Rushworth Kidder explained the importance of moral courage in living the ethical life. He said courageous leaders have a high tolerance for three things: ambiguity, public exposure and personal risk. “Envision a Venn diagram where the circles represent principles, danger and endurance. Moral courage exists at the intersection of those three things. Moral courage is being willing to endure significant danger for the sake of your principles,” he explained. 

“Everywhere you go and ask 'What are the most important moral values?,' you get similar answers," said Dr. Kidder. “Honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness and compassion are common answers. There is no difference in the values held by men and women or English speakers and not, those who are deeply religious and those who are not religious.” He said in a values-challenged age, the difference between talking about ethics and acting ethically is summed up in two words: moral courage.   

Read more in Threes, Chapter 4 “Threes in Religion and Mythology"

Three Challenges for On-line Demand Services

The emergence of on-line services such as Uber and Handy and others has ramped up the profile of online demand. It represents an interesting convergence of consumer expectations and technology. 

 

Are these types of services fighting an uphill battle?

 

The Economist thinks perhaps. “There are three reasons for skepticism about their chances. The first is that on-demand companies trying to keep the costs to their clients as low as possible have difficulties training, managing and motivating workers….The second problem is that on-demand companies seem likely to be plagued by regulatory and political problems if they get large enough for people to notice them….The third issue is size. The on-demand model obviously has network effects: the home-help company with the most help on the books has the best chance of providing a handyman at 10:30 sharp. Yet scaling up may be difficult when barriers to entry are low and bonds of loyalty are non-existent.”

 

From The Economist, “There’s an App for that,” January 3, 2015.

Three Layers of the Cloud

We hear about the cloud and cloud computing.  But did you know?…

“The ‘cloud of clouds’ has three distinct layers.  The outer one called ‘software as a service’ (SaaS), includes web-based applications such as Gmail, Google’s e-mail service, and Salesforce.com, which helps firms keep track of their customers….Going one level deeper, there is ‘platform as a service,’ (PaaS), which means an operating system living in the cloud.  Such services allow developers to write applications for the web and mobile devices.  Offered by Google, Salesforce.com and Microsoft, this market is also fairly easy to measure, since there are only a few providers, and their offerings have not really taken off yet….The most interesting layer—the only one that really deserves to be called ‘cloud computing,’ say purists—is infrastructure as a service (IaaS).  IaaS offers basic computing services from number crunching to data storage, which customers can combine to build highly adaptable computer systems.” 

Market leaders are GoGrid, Rackspace and Amazon Web Services.  Amazon is by far the largest, owning about 80 to 90% of the current capacity.  The cloud is estimated by Forrester Research to grow to $56 billion in 2020 from about $1 billion in 2010.           

From Threes, Chapter 8, “Threes in Business and Technology” 

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.      

 

from Threes, Chapter 4, “Threes in Religion and Mythology”

The Big Three in World War II

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin—the leaders of the three major Allied powers—were known during World War II as The Big Three. The Big Three and their military advisors planned and executed the strategy that defeated the Axis. 

The Axis powers included Germany, Italy and Japan. World War II began on September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Great Britain and France were drawn into the war quickly as Nazi Germany moved its mighty army west through Europe. The United States entered the war two years later after Japan bombed naval forces at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Churchill and Roosevelt conferred frequently on overall strategy.  Stalin directed the Soviet war effort against the Germans who pushed east, but he rarely consulted his allies.  

Nazism was the German political movement initiated in 1920 that culminated in the establishment of the Third Reich and the totalitarian German state led by the dictator Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1945. Probably no regime in the 20th century or any other has been so closely identified with institutionalized terror and evil as that of the Third Reich under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Its rise and fall had worldwide consequences, and its legacy continued to shape the identity of Germans long afterward. Hitler believed he was creating a third German empire, a successor to the Holy Roman Empire and the German empire formed by Chancellor Bismarck in the nineteenth century.  

The main disagreement among The Big Three concerned an Allied invasion of western Europe. Churchill argued for the immediate invasion of Italy. Roosevelt and Churchill discussed plans for a joint British and American invasion of France in the spring of 1944, but they needed time to prepare. President Roosevelt relied heavily on his military advisors, principally Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall, whose strategy for prosecuting the war ultimately prevailed and led to the Allied victory.

From Threes, Chapter 7, “Threes in Government and Politics”

Watch These Three Countries as the Price of Oil Falls

“The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 had many causes. None was as basic as the fall in the price of oil, its main export, by two-thirds in real terms between 1980 and 1986.  By the same token, the 14-year rule of Vladimir Putin, heir to what remained, has been bolstered by a threefold rise in the oil price.”

Oil is falling again, and this week’s drop in price was severe.  Some countries that depend on the sale of oil they produce will be squeezed on profits.  “For those governments that have used the windfall revenues from higher prices to run aggressive foreign policies, things could get uncomfortable. The most vulnerable are Venezuela, Iran and Russia.”

From The Economist, page 16, “Many winners, a few bad losers,” October 25, 2014

A Time to be Grateful

Grace fascinates for its many dimensions.  It goes well beyond the spiritual meanings.  You can think of physical grace or gracefulness, which is an ability to move around effortlessly.  You can think of social grace.  In Greek mythology the Charites, known as The Three Graces, were the goddesses of joy, charm and beauty.  They were named Aglaia (Splendor), Euphrosyne (Mirth), and Thalia (Good Cheer).  The Graces presided over banquets, dances, and all other pleasurable social events, and brought joy and goodwill to both gods and mortals.   In Roman mythology they were known as the Gratiae, which connotes gratitude. 

With grace and gratitude derived from the Latin gratus, the meaning of grace can be extended to mean a sense of gratitude or gratefulness.  “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough, and more.  It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.  It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events.  Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow,” writes Melodie Beattie.               

from Threes, Chapter 4, “Threes in Religion and Mythology” 

Three Things Distinguish Interstellar

“No one willingly attends a space science fiction movie with a space history curator. The audible eye rolling, heavy sighing and groans of protest when the laws of physics are violated through the magic of CGI can ruin even the most entertaining and fast-paced science fiction movie for others. Even tightly written movies that cause the most skeptical to suspend disbelief for the duration of the film later generate days of recrimination over historical, logical, mechanical and physical flaws. The flaws can range from meaningless ones to grand leaps of faith; all of which can unravel the entire fabric of the story. Interstellar is not one of these movies.  

“Three things distinguish the film from recent space-themed movies: it is grounded in the current concerns of our world; its plot is rich in the technically accurate science and technology of spaceflight and the movie pays homage to the best of the spaceflight cinema genre. All three themes transport the viewer and leave few concerns for what might be missing, rather than what the film got wrong.”  

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-interstellar-belongs-pantheon-best-realistic-science-fiction-films-

China Is Number One Again

When the International Monetary Fund released its ranking of the largest economies last month, China returned to top spot for the first time in two centuries.  Measured in purchasing power parity, China moved ahead of the United States, which had been number one since 1820.  India is number three.

 

One hundred years ago the three top economies were United States, Japan and Britain.  Economists think China will continue to grow for a long time, and better wages will continue to lift a large poor segment of its society into the middle class where they can become consumers.

 

Read more in Threes, Chapter 6 “Threes in Economics and Finance”

Halloween and Threes

Halloween or Hallowe'en is a contraction of All Hallows' Evening, which is also known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve and All Saints' Eve.  The yearly celebration is observed in a number of countries on October 31, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It initiates the triduum of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed believers. Within Allhallowtide, the traditional focus of All Hallows' Eve revolves around the theme of using "humor and ridicule to confront the power of death."


According to many scholars, All Hallows' Eve is a Christianized feast initially influenced by Celtic harvest festivals with possible pagan roots, particularly the Gaelic Samhain. Other scholars maintain that it originated separate from Samhain and has solely Christian roots.
 

And this from the “Jack is Back” lyrics:

“So be careful when out on this all hallows eve,

Stay away from the dark, travel in threes.

Jack might pick you for his dinner tonight,

If he sees you alone, in the dark, he just might.”