Movement detector. Thirty second timer.

Don't wave your arms. Shrug your shoulders, carefully.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Getting a job in financial services has undoubtedly become more meritocratic as diversity programs at large institutions take hold. But in a world where relationships and personal connections still matter, do firms secretly prefer to hire the upper classes?

...

Upper class connections also count outside Britain. In China, the so-called `princelings' - descendants of Mao's generals who wield massive influence in the country - are prominent in the financial sector. A number of the second generation have risen to senior positions in local institutions. Liu Lefei, son of Liu Yunshan who is in charge of ideology and propaganda in the Communist Party, was until recently chairman and chief executive of Citec Securities. Liu Xiaoyuan, daughter-in-law to economy reformist Deng Xiaoping, is vice general manager of Beijing Investment Consultants.

...

But even in the US, which prides itself on equal opportunity, the financial sector prefers the privileged. According to a 2012 study published by Lauren A. Rivera from Northwestern University, the recruitment process remains slanted towards those from an upper class background. Rivera,  assistant professor of management and organisations at the school, interviewed over 100 Wall Street professionals for her research.

You should be so lucky that the president feels he has the time, energy and political capital to spend wrestling with Bibi to forge a peace between Israelis and Palestinians. I don't see it anytime soon. Obama has his marching orders from the American people: Focus on Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, not on Bethlehem, Palestine, and focus on getting us out of quagmires (Afghanistan) not into them (Syria). No, my Israeli friends, it's much worse than you think: You're home alone.

Of course, no one here will tell you that. To the contrary, there will surely be a new secretary of state visiting you next year with the umpteenth road map for "confidence-building measures" between Israelis and Palestinians. He or she may even tell you that "this is the year of decision." Be careful. We've been there before. If you Google "Year of decision in the Middle East," you'll get more than 100,000,000 links.

President Barack Obama will visit Israel in the spring, the White House said Tuesday, marking Obama's first visit to the staunch U.S. ally since becoming president.

Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the visit by phone in late January, when Obama congratulated Netanyahu on his success in Israel's recent election. The White House has not released the date of Obama's trip or details about Obama's itinerary, but Israel's Channel 10 reported that a visit had been scheduled for March 20.

Research by Virginia Tech found that reading so-called "chick lit" books in which the protagonist worried about her weight made women uncomfortable about their own body image.

It looked at "the effect of protagonist body weight and body esteem on female readers' body esteem" and concluded that "scholars and health officials should be concerned about the effect chick lit novels might have on women's body image".

The neoclassical interpretation is that Macbeth became involved in conflict due to imperfect information as to his opponents' preferences and strengths; that he made his choices rationally given his priors of belief; that his choices had been hard because they belonged to sets of equilibrium strategies containing more than one element; that, perhaps, there was an element of the irrational in his deeds that took the form of some random `tremble'; some deviation from the optimal strategy which packs no significance in itself; and so on. All these suppositions are contentious because they wilfully ignore the possibility that a rational Macbeth could have chosen from the non-equilibrium strategy set as well (as I have contended in this book). None, however, is as contentious, and downright absurd, as the assertion that Macbeth's choices left his personality unaffected, or that they affected him in a predetermined (even if stochastically so) manner. Once choice and action contaminate motivation, the latter cannot determine the former. Indeterminacy is, therefore, irrepressible not just as the stuff of good theatre but also as a prerequisite for human development.

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