Stuart's Spectacular Students

This is dedicated to my amazing students. The goal is for each and every one of them to feel unstoppable by the time they walk out of the classroom door for the final time in May. This chronicles their journey; their own Chronicles of Self-Actualization.

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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Not Now. Not Ever.

“A young and vital child knows no limit to his own will, and it is the only reality to him.

It is not that he wants at the outset to fight other wills, but that they simply do not exist for him.









Like the artist, he goes forth to the work of creation, gloriously alone.”

Jane Harrison

I still remember when Bella (age 3-4), just learning to speak in sentences, told her brother (age 5-6) who was stuck in a tree, "Face your feawrs, Bwosden. You can do it."

I love the great spirit that exists within all of us. The spirit to simply enjoy life or to give us the confidence to move mountains. Isn't it sad though that as we get older, this spirit decreases instead of increases, sometimes at a very early age.

No way! No more! Every child and person I know will know no limits. Not now. Not ever.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Cool Quotes

Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened.
~Jennifer Yane

The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.
~Harry Golden

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
~John Quincy Adams

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
~Author Unknown

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything
~William Shakespeare

It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down.
~George MacDonald

Always kiss
your children goodnight - even if they're already asleep
~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.
~Thomas Carlyle

Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.
~François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665

The best way to predict your future is to create it.
~Peter Drucker

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.
~funny license plate sayings by Joseph Heller, Catch-22, 1961

Positive attitude is an amazing catalyst to success.
~Jose B. Cabajar

The only guy I have to get better than is who I am right now.
~M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter

and my favorite....

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.
~Benjamin Disraeli

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

MASSIVE Holiday SPIRIT

"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising each and every time we fail."
- Confucius

I like this time of year. People are filled with that special holiday spirit...and I am certain it is this very spirit that is the key to a very special life.

You absolutely must overcome the challenges that come into your life. Each time you go after something and don't get it, you MUST keep trying, especially if it takes you becoming more in order to get what it is you're after.

From my own personal experience and the 1,000+ students I've taught, it's become clear that as you CONTINUE to try AFTER having failed in your 1st, 5th or even 50th attempt, you DO become smarter and stronger while holding firm to your dream and refusing to give up.

As you become bigger, so does your world, and the size of your world becomes the size of your spirit!

I wish all of you the most MASSIVE SPIRIT you've ever had this holiday; one that carries you all the way through the wonderful year of 2009!

Thursday, December 18, 2008

'Dark energy' expands, contracts universe

'Dark energy' expands, contracts universe: researchers

'Dark energy' expands, contracts universe: researchers AFP/NASA/File – This August 2008 image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory show a clear …

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Mysterious "dark energy" works simultaneously to expand the universe and shrink objects inside it, astronomers in the United States said Tuesday.

By studying how gravity competes with the expansion of galaxy clusters, scientists have found "a crucial independent test of dark energy," said the research compiled by scientists using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

"This result could be described as 'arrested development of the universe,'" said lead researcher Alexey Vikhlinin of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in the northeastern state of Massachusetts.

"Whatever is forcing the expansion of the universe to speed up is also forcing its development to slow down."

Dark energy makes up about 70 percent of the universe, said the research to be published in the February 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal.

After years of research, scientists now believe that dark energy is "a form of repulsive gravity that dominates the universe, although they have no clear picture of what it actually is," the research report said.

"What this means for the future of this universe is that accelerated expansion will proceed forever but will probably not result in a Big Rip," said Vikhlinin.

"That is, nearby galaxies will eventually disappear from our sight, but the structures already formed by clusters of galaxies and our own galaxy will not be torn apart, not in the near future anyway."

The research differed from previous studies on supernovas, which are the explosive deaths of massive stars, and provided the "strongest evidence yet that dark energy is the cosmological constant," he said, similar to the energy of empty space.

"Or in other words, that 'nothing weighs something,'" said Vikhlinin.

The discovery of dark energy in 1998 sparked renewed interest in Albert Einstein's theory of cosmological constants, a modification of his theory of relativity which suggests a possible repulsive force in the universe.

Einstein hypothesized that a repulsive force in space could explain the universe's equilibrium with the force of gravity.

Without such a contrary force, gravity would cause the universe to implode, Einstein suggested.

Scientists find hole in Earth's magnetic field

Scientists find hole in Earth's magnetic field

LOS ANGELES – Recent satellite observations have revealed the largest breach yet seen in the magnetic field that protects Earth from most of the sun's violent blasts, researchers reported Tuesday. The discovery was made last summer by Themis, a fleet of five small NASA satellites.

Scientists have long known that the Earth's magnetic field, which guards against severe space weather, is similar to a drafty old house that sometimes lets in violent eruptions of charged particles from the sun. Such a breach can cause brilliant auroras or disrupt satellite and ground communications.

Observations from Themis show the Earth's magnetic field occasionally develops two cracks, allowing solar wind — a stream of charged particles spewing from the sun at 1 million mph — to penetrate the Earth's upper atmosphere.

Last summer, Themis calculated a layer of solar particles to be at least 4,000 miles thick in the outermost part of the Earth's magnetosphere, the largest tear of the protective shield found so far.

"It was growing rather fast," Themis scientist Marit Oieroset of the University of California, Berkeley told an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Such breaches are temporary, and the one observed last year lasted about an hour, Oieroset said.

Solar flares are a potential danger to astronauts in orbit but generally are not a risk to people on the surface of the Earth.

The research was funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Scientists initially believed the greatest solar breach occured when the Earth's and sun's magnetic fields are pointed in opposite directions. But data from Themis found the opposite to be true. Twenty times more solar wind passed into the Earth's protective shield when the magnetic fields were aligned, Oieroset said.

The Themis results could have bearing on how scientists predict the severity of solar storms and their effects on power grids, airline and military communications and satellite signals.

The Themis satellites were launched to find the source of brief powerful geomagnetic disturbances in the Earth's atmosphere.

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