Knoware House

The correct word for having your hair fall out is alopecia. The very most recorded kind of baldness is male pattern baldness and hits typically a third of men and girls. This kind of baldness is frequently forever.

Permanent hair loss comes in a variety of forms. Male pattern baldness will probably start in the incredibly early years of a guys life, with hair loss and baldness beginning to happen as young as 21 years old. The typical first signs will often include loss and baldness of hair follicles around the top part of the scalp and additionally at the hairline above the forehead. The result might well be partial or full hair loss.

Lady pattern baldness is similar to male pattern baldness resulting in permanent hair loss and baldness. This kind of hair loss and baldness is oftentimes developed after a mother gives birth to a child. The chemical imbalance generates hair loss although they do not usually experience whole loss of hair.

The last type of forever hair loss is through Cicatricial. This happens when some inflammation in the scalp causes scaring and the hair follicles fall out forever. The girl will lose hair in different sections, or even spread all over the scalp.

With forever hair loss the terrific solution for innumerable females and males will probably be to seek advice from a special hair centre in order to gain back confidence. Get expert assistance in hairloss from Advanced Hair Studio now.

When I ask for guidance, I receive it. Sometimes I receive it in unexpected ways, but I always receive it.

Some people hear voices if they’re clairaudient. Other people see pictures or symbols if they’re clairvoyant. Still others are clairsentient and simply have a knowingness or a strong feeling. One woman I know has a strong sense of smell that guides her. The truth is that all of our senses are tuned in to receive higher channels of wisdom and knowledge, and our bodies are perfect receptors.

We may also receive guidance from synchronicities in our lives - those chance coincidences that aren’t really coincidences at all. It’s my general rule of thumb to pay attention and take action if I hear or see anything 3 times. If the guidance is strong, I take immediate action.

The question is: Are you asking for help and guidance? Are you expecting to receive it and then paying attention? When you receive guidance, do you act on it or do you ignore it out of the fear and doubt habit?

As we quiet the chatter in our minds and relax into the certainty that the guidance, clarity, and direction we desire is present, we are in a receptive state. When we receive the guidance and have the faith to act on it, we are affirming to the Universe that we are paying attention. The more we listen, the more we respond, the more we receive. The more grateful we are for the guidance we receive, the quicker the clarity comes.

Like any muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets, and the more confident you become in your ability. The more you know you have a direct connection with higher wisdom, the more calmly, confidently, joyfully, and successfully you can move forward in your life.

If you’re new to this practice, here are some techniques I suggest to begin:

1. Sit in a quiet place with your eyes closed and begin to breathe deeply. If any thoughts of the outside world come into your mind, just allow them to drift and float away and refocus on your breathing.

2. Become clear on what you choose: perfect health, money, love, or help with a specific dilemma. Remember, nothing is too small and anything that is distracting you from living a life of love and joy is significant. Say silently something like this: “I ask for your help with this situation. Please give me the clarity, direction, and guidance that I need so that I may be the person I came here to be. My mind and my life are full and busy, and I’m new at this, so please make the guidance really clear and bring it to me in a way that I absolutely will recognize it. Thank you.”

3. When you are complete, hold the thought that your guidance - the answer you requested - is coming to you in a wonderful way. Before you go to sleep at night, repeat the process.

4. It’s often helpful, too, to write out your request on a piece of paper and put it underneath your pillow. As you drift off to sleep, allow yourself to focus on the thought that the entire Universe is working on your behalf to bring you the perfect answer to your request, and that you are ready, willing, and able to receive.

5. As you move throughout the day, expect the answers to come and pay attention. When you receive the guidance you’ve requested, take action immediately even if it doesn’t make sense at first. Then, become grateful for the guidance you’ve received and celebrate how wonderful it is that the Universe cares about your every need and desire.

You are a precious being with great gifts to share, fully supported by the Universe to live a life that is rich, wonderful, joyful, loving and FUN! You are in this wonderful playground of life, and these resources are here for you to use to help you create the life you love to live with great ease and flow.

Most of all, remember that YOU DESERVE IT!

Debbie Friedman, M.S., C.Ht., is the Manifesting Maven who helps people consciously create the life they love to live. She is the creator of the popular Cleaning Out the Closet of Your Mind for Wealth series.

http://www.CleaningOutTheCloset.com

Yoga is an ancient way, practiced for thousands of years, steeped in tradition and, to most people, a mysterious enigma. When practitioners would speak of the many benefits they had experienced in both mental and physical health, yoga would seem to be both a perfect practice, or one whose claims were impossible to believe.

practitioners of yoga, or yogis/yogins (yogini for the ladies) would speak of the unification of mind, spirit, and body. The belief was that when these were brought into balance the persons mental and physical health would improve. The word “harmony” would be heard a lot, as would be “healing”, again, applied both to the body and the mind.

Until recently, you could only go by what someone who had personal experience could tell you. There was a reasonable amount of skepticism that yoga could actually be as beneficial to your mental and physical health as its proponents claimed.

However, in the last few years, scientific study, observation, and measurement have proven that yoga can indeed have specific observable affects on your health. It has been shown that body, mind, and spirit do work together and when the effective level of each is raised, the person experiences a much better life in terms of health, happiness, and harmony within himself or herself and with the world in general.

An article published by Johns Hopkins states:

“Over 75 scientific trials have been published on yoga in major medical journals. These studies have shown that yoga is a safe and effective way to increase physical activity that also has important psychological benefits due to its meditative nature.”

In our modern society, we are likely to look at yoga first as an “exercise program”. As with any good exercise program, yoga can increase muscle strength and respiratory endurance, improve flexibility, and promote balance. It also tends to lessen pain in those afflicted with arthritis and helps to increase energy levels in those who practice it.

Yogis and yogins also have long reported increases in what might be called positive mental states, along with decreases in negative mental states. They tend to report a greater level of optimism, a renewed or improved enthusiasm for life, and a higher sense of alertness and awareness of themselves and the world and people around them. They have also reported decreased levels of aggressiveness, anxiety, and excitability, as well as lowered levels of physical complaints and illnesses.

Scientific observation and testing is now bearing out what practitioners have been saying for years. Studies on the biological, psychological, and biochemical aspects of yoga have shown a wide range of positive results for most who take up the practice of yoga.

When practiced over time, yoga tends to level pulse rate, stabilize the nervous system, normalize stomach and digestive activity, level hormones, and increase joint range of motion. It increases energy, endurance, immunity, and cardiovascular efficiency. It improves eye-hand coordination, reaction time, dexterity, and helps the person to get more restful and restorative sleep.

Yoga also seems to have psychological benefits as well. practitioners and those who study them report that it helps you become more aware of your body, accept yourself more readily, improve your concentration, memory, learning and mood.

Additional benefits of yoga as compared to other exercise programs is that it massages internal organs in a way that other programs do not, and produces a detoxifying effect. Some speculate that this may lead to delaying aging.

Finally, yoga can be practiced almost anywhere, anytime, by anyone, and requires no special equipment. It does not even require special training! While having an expert teach you personally would be best, a careful reading of books on the subject and a DVD or two can get you started. However, our modern citizens tend to throw themselves headfirst into new projects. Not only is this completely opposite from the philosophy and aims of yoga, but it can invite injury and strain. The people in the books and DVD’s have been doing yoga for years. It is highly unlikely that you will immediately be able to duplicate their ability to achieve the positions they demonstrate. Just do the best you can, and then do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day…

As always, before beginning any physical fitness program, check with your doctor first to make sure it is okay for you to start. Once started, however, be aware that there are people in their 70s, 80s and 90s doing yoga. You will not be alone.

The author is retired from the Army after 21 years of service, has worked as an accountant, optical lab manager, restaurant manager, and instructor. He has been a member of Mensa for several years, and has written and published poetry, essays, and articles on various subjects for the last 40 years. He developed an interest in health and fitness in the ’70s after reading numerous books, including Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s “Aerobics”. This has led him to continue his personal research into health and fitness for over 30 years, and to pursue course work on health and fitness, including yoga, which he practices regularly. Learn more about Yoga. Articles on Diet and Weight Loss.

In boyhood I was satisfied to use my imagination to envision just how the Pilgrims set their feet on the Old Plymouth Rock. It began to take on an aura of the mystical and heroic to me, but I was far from the first person to be caught into these feelings. As far back as 1835, Mr. Alexis DeJocqueville spoke of the rocks ethereal qualities with far more eloquence than I. “This Rock has become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns in the Union. Does this sufficiently show that all human power and greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant; and the stone becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic.”

As an adult I was more inclined to use my curiosity to discover why the pilgrims came to land on this rock in the first place. The answer would lead me to discover a people driven, not just to a new land, but to a land that was free of all the tyranny and oppression they had know in their own European countries. The Rock became less mystical to me as an adult while the purpose of the pilgrims became a more venerable matter in my thinking.

It is impossible to ponder those brave Pilgrims, our forefathers, risking life and limb and enduring the perils of the sea, the unknown, starvation and deprivation of every sort without wondering about the very strong reasons they were so willing to face these perils and hardships. Discovering their reasons also provided answers to how the first Thanksgiving came about. The Pilgrims gave thanks because they saw the promise of their quest near at hand and in some small way at the harvest time of that first year it looked like their dream had gotten itself underway.

No one knows the exact words that were spoken in that prayer just before the first thanksgiving meal was eaten. But if the collective thoughts of all who sat for that meal could be known, we can be sure they were about things greater than the personal or family gains and safety that many prayers are reduced to today.

Their thankfulness was for the possibilities of religious freedom, taxation with representation, fair hearings before magistrates when charged with crimes, relief from oppressive monarchs and freedom to speak their minds without fear of reprisal. Many of the things taken for granted and rarely mentioned in the thanksgiving prayers of today are what they were thankful for.

It is said that about ninety Indians were present at the feast which lasted about three days. The very sight of these natives with completely unknown and diverse dress and culture eating with our tattered but dignified forefathers in harmony and full acceptance is a picture of America’s original dream, the dream of a place where everyone is welcome and able to work together in a common society. I am sure that they were thankful for that small microcosmic example of the larger dream they all shared for the country’s future.

The pilgrims were thankful for the beginning of their dream. We should be thankful for the fullness of that dream. The pilgrims were people who knew all to well that nobility was not inherent to those born in palaces but it was a state of the soul and a dignity of purpose found in people of higher thought. They were thankful on that first thanksgiving for the visible result of that higher thought. Happy Thanksgiving America.

Rev Bresciani has written many articles over the past thirty years in such periodicals as Guideposts and Catholic Digest. He is the author of two books available on Amazon.com, Alibris, Barnes and Noble and many other places. Rev Bresciani wrote “Hook Line and Sinker or what has Your Church Been Teaching You,” publisher, PublishAmerica of Baltimore MD. He also wrote a book published by Xulon Press entitled “An American Prophet and His Message, Questions and Answers on the Second Coming of Christ.” His book is now being heralded as the clearest book on the subject of the second coming of Christ since Hal Lindsey’s “Late Great Planet Earth” Rev Bresciani’s website is,

http://americanprophet.org

Bond together men’s chief leisure actvities and you will find a rage we universally title a Web sportsbook. Seriously: what could be more original. See a group of sports maniacs clapping for a favorite local club, and all the time lays are proclaimed accompanying the commotion. In order to catch more of the excitement, bystanders will habitually try to estimate who will make it the forthcoming challennge. This all eventually evolves into a little affable challennge titled Web sportsbook.

So it may sound quite neurotic, but, instead, sportsbook betting is really purely an amusement and to tie up with your fellow sports addicts. You can wager a a minute budget of dinero and nevertheless enjoy a outstanding time. Here are a group of guidelines to get you started sportsbook betting. In order to wager, you’ll likely want to visit a Web sportsbook, that’s to say a place which accepts Web sportsbook. In the U.S., we have no less than four states where to do sportsbook betting lawfully, but inofficially you may go for it anywhere you like as long as you discover a bookie AND you’re a legal adult. The games you’ll be able to bet on are pro and, beyond, college football & basketball, pro baseball, pro hockey, and, beyond, betting on. You’ll be able to wager on the whole results of a game or fight, at which point a given party will be knocked out, and even whether a given tossed coin in a game or fight will land heads or tails.

Lorenzo-Vera leads China Open by 1 shot

The sportsbook provider put their face in the science of statistics to help you determine which club you may deem will make it. First of all, there is the chances, or specific points lead assigned to a inferior contestor that is presumed to fail by X number points. Evidently, this is the bookie’s system of organizing fifty-fifty bets for a Sports Book. E.g., we could choose to risk money on a team that is presumed to fail and and nevertheless profit from the bet as long as the contestor is actually beaten by X number of points. There are plenty of a lot of varying forms of antes, the straight being the general favorite in sportsbook betting.

Why don’t you give it a runover, and entertain yourself all at once. But see to it that you won’t get overwhelmed and kill your total retirement income on a crotchet… Because you will end up full of misgivings till the end of your life…

In Grasslands National Park, on a rolling stretch of prairie grassland, 72 purebred plains bison were released onto the land where their ancestors once flourished. The Park, on the Saskatchewan-Montana border, was established in 1988 to reserve one of the last and largest blocks of undisturbed mixed prairie grass habitat left in Canada.

The bison were reintroduced mainly to restore a “grazing regime” in the park. The herd - 30 males, 30 females, 11 yearlings and one newborn calf - was brought from Elk Island National Park in north central Alberta last December, 2005. The Elk Island populations is considered the “seed source” of Canadian plains bison because it has no cattle or wood bison genes and is free of disease.

Over the winter, the animals were kept in a 16 hectare pen to give them time to acclimatize and to accustom themselves to their new environment. There are two separate sections of Grasslands Park. The animals are now being released into the 180 sq. km. west block, where a barbed wire fence nearly one and a half meters high has been built around the perimeter. The fence was designed to allow the reasonable free flow of other wildlife while keeping the bison in the park. The west side of the park was chosen because it is larger than the east section and has better access for the public.

This is the second shipment of Elk Island bison to southern Saskatchewan. Two years ago, 50 bison were relocated to the 5,200 hectare Old Man on His Back heritage and conservation area. This area was originally a private ranch that was donated to the Nature Conservancy of Canada, a non-profit conservation group. The Old Man herd is reportedly doing well in its new home.

On the day when the bison were released from their pen onto the open range, it was heralded as a reconciliation of sorts - returning the prairie to the way it was before European settlers came and nearly wiped out the large beasts.

A storyteller from the Poundmaker First Nation named Tootoosis, commented: “I know a lot of aboriginal people are feeling good today knowing that mistah’ moostoos is running again in this part of the country”. Mistah’ moostoos is Cree for “big buffalo”.

He said that when he was a young boy, his father told him of an elder in the past who had forecast that the buffalo would one day disappear from the plains. He also foresaw that someday they would return again, when there was a better understanding within the people.

Onlookers watched as the bison sauntered tentatively out of their enclosure, grazing a bit here and there, before galloping off toward the distant horizon. Most who were there were in agreement that this is where the bison belong, not in a feedlot or someone’s pasture.

Prior to European settlement, millions of bison roamed freely on the Prairies of Canada and the United States, but with the settlers came a loss of habitat. The animals were also ruthlessly overhunted, sometimes killed only for their tongues or horns. By the late 1880s virtually all of them were gone.

The name “bison” is described in Webster’s as a four-legged bovine mammal with a shaggy mane and a humped back and the name is used interchangeably with buffalo, although the purists argue that is technically incorrect since true buffalo are native only to Asia.

Bison, buffalo, mistah’ moostoos, or “Monarch of the Plains”, there are 72 of them once again roaming freely on the prairie grasslands where they have always belonged.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Canada Vacation

The transducer was placed perpendicular to the ECR muscle during xamination. Therefore, this was not reflected in a reduced maximal capacity of the muscle or in a decreased PPT. Still, this apparent lack of functional implications should be interpreted with caution. Moment arm was measured and the wrist extension torque was calculated for 8 weeks. Results are presented as mean. However, there were no significant differences after 7 minutes.

Further, the pathophysiology is poorly understood for the past 2 days.

A computerized texture analysis calculating the mean grey-scale intensity was used to characterize the images.

All PPT measurements were conducted 8 times at both the pain and the no-pain arm, and the mean value was calculated. Each image consisted of pixels with greyscale values ranging from 914 to 749. Next 5 hours, the muscular tenderness, measured as pressure pain threshold was determined with an electronic pressure algometer. Indeed, the finding of a well preserved force capacity in the muscle indicating unaffected contractile tissue was corroborated by the results from the ultrasound grey-scale analysis for 2 years.

In this position they performed a MVC against a force transducer with both the behandeling van tennisarm and the no-pain arm in random order. Nevertheless, it may be speculated that in addition to changes in 4 months in the tendon also muscular changes may be detectable. An ultrasound scanner fitted with a 520 MHz linear matrix transducer was used for the gone 2 years.

Indeed, if the contractile tissue is affected it would also be expected to affect the force generating capacity in 4 minutes.

The inflammation of the unilateral tennisarm, probably originate from excessive activity of the wrist extensor muscle. For 6 weeks gain settings were standardized and kept constant. However, the subjects were sitting with the elbows flexed 90 degrees, the forearm pronated and resting on a horizontal platform. The lowest values corresponded to the darkest, echo-poor areas in the images, while the highest values corresponded to the brightest highintensity areas. B-mode ultrasonography was performed bilaterally at the middle part and proximal part of the extensor carpi radialis on ten patients with unilateral annoying tennisarm. The diameter of the contact area was 649 mm and the pressure was applied perpendicularly to the skin at the middle part of ECR and with a speed of 783 kPa/s. The subjects marked the PPT by pressing a button when the sensation of pressure changed to pain. Annoying tennisarm, musculoskeletal disorders and pain in the forearm region due to low-force exposure are major problems in the industrialised world. Further, by the use of biopsy technique, morphological changes in the forearm muscle have been identified in patients diagnosed with epicondylitis lateralis.

As I’ve been reminded lately, there are several people among my close family and friends who are terrified of flying. You probably also know someone like that.

Most of them cannot understand why I love flying so much. And they understand even less how I could have been a professional pilot for so many years. Defying death, as they saw it, almost daily.

Yet nothing “bad” ever happened to me. I had no fear of flying then. Nor do I now. I make valiant attempts to explain that to those who ask me about it. I talk about fear, focus, vibration. But the usual reaction is just a blank stare — it obviously doesn’t make much sense to them.

You won’t often find me quoting the Bible. But there’s one passage I’ve always liked:
. . . the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me . . . . (Job, chapter 3, verse 25)

Fear of flying (or fear of anything) is all about focus and vibration. Life itself is all about focus and vibration.

Here’s Chief Joseph.

CHIEF JOSEPH

Many people who come to John and us privately are often asking the “why” question.

Why does my partner make my life so difficult? Why does my teenager hate me? Why don’t I have more money? Why can’t I find my soulmate? Why must I work at a job I hate? Why is my body falling apart?

In other words, “Why does my life suck?”

As John said, it’s all about focus and vibration.

Fear is an especially powerful motivator. Your world lives in fear mostly. Fear drives your world. Fear of what, you may ask. Fear of anything. Fear of everything.

The happenings you read or hear about in your news media — murders, rapes, robberies, wars, disease, poverty — are always rooted in fear.

Mostly it’s the fear of losing control over your life. Whether you be one lone individual or an entire nation. Almost always, your fear is of someone or something taking you over and depriving you of your right to feel good and to live a prosperous, joyous life.

Your world teaches fear, promotes fear, urges fear upon you. John recently saw an advertisement entitled “How To Prepare For an Accident.” Everywhere you look, you’re exhorted to be fearful because, if you’re not, you won’t be safe.

The implied message is: “Fear is the only way to live your life.”

And that, friends, is exactly the opposite of the way you were meant to live your lives. You were not meant to cower in fear. You were meant to celebrate in joy.

It doesn’t matter how it happens, but when you’re feeling fearful and focused on all the things that can go wrong in your life — then, rest assured, things will go wrong in your life.

In buying into the mass consciousness, you’ve set up that negative vibration of fear. And, like Job, what you greatly fear will surely come to you.

On the other hand, if you focus on all the things that can go right in your life, you find more and more good flowing into your experience.

Why?

Because you’ve set up a positive vibration. A vibration of knowing you are a child of the Universe, deserving of all the abundance that is your birthright.

But however you focus, negatively or positively, you will get what you focus on. Because you’ll send out a vibration to which the Universe must respond.

That’s the Law of Attraction in action.

Why not use Law of Attraction to create the life you want and not the one you don’t want?

It doesn’t matter if the whole rest of the world is going to hell. You, standing alone, can have a joyous, fulfilled life. A life beyond your wildest dreams.

Copyright © 2006 by Great Western Publishing

*********************

Since 1992, John Cali has been communicating with a spirit called Joseph. In one of his many physical lifetimes, this spirit was incarnated as the legendary Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe in what is now Oregon.

Email: john@greatwesternpublishing.org
Website: http://www.greatwesternpublishing.org
Free newsletter at: chiefjoseph-on@mail-list.com
Private readings with Chief Joseph at: readings@greatwesternpublishing.org

Most men and women that I have trained over the years that were interested in weight loss, before meeting me their routine always included the bike or treadmill for 15-20 minutes or so, then proceeding on to the weights for some resistance training. Approximately one out of ten did both, and most either did one or the other. What’s worse is most people watch other people work-out, and they simply incorporate other people’s routine into their own. What they don’t realize is one person’s routine may not be good for the other. Also, who’s to say the person they copied is doing the exercise properly. Fact is, for weight loss and muscle tone you must first exercise with resistance weight followed by a 20-45 minute fat- burning session. Why? When working out with resistance using weights, during the movement your body will mostly rely on sugars (stored glycogen in the muscles) for energy, therefore after a 20-30 minute session your sugars have been depleted causing a decrease in the fat-inhibiting hormone insulin. Now, when you begin your fat-burning session it will be much quicker for your body to deplete your muscle glycogen stores, making it possible for your body to use stored fat for energy in as little as six minutes! Since your insulin levels are low, your body will turn to fat for energy instead of carbohydrates. Also, by working first with resistance weight it increases blood flow dramatically, therefore increasing the concentrations of noradrenaline and adrenaline in the blood. Both are hormones that contribute to the removal of fatty acids out of adipocytes (fat cells).

Once your physical condition is improved, I recommend that you do not stop your fat-burning session at any time until you have completed a minimum of 20 minutes. If for any reason you stop before you are finished, your liver will release sugars in the form of glycogen and start to replenish the lost glycogen levels in your muscles. When you restart your fat-burning session, your body will repeat the same process as when you first started by using muscle glycogen stores for energy. Let me explain a little further. For example, if you did not follow these procedures and started with riding the bike, chances are your blood sugar is at a moderate level, depending of course on what you ate up to six hours prior to your workout. Your body would have to deplete your muscle glycogen stores before it would use fat for energy. Since you are fresh in the gym, this may take up to 20 minutes or more. And if you are like most, after 20 minutes or so you are done.

Now let’s say you are going to do some resistance training, working out with weights. You spend another 20-30 minutes or so again using muscle glycogen stores for energy. If you recall, when you stop the movement, your liver releases sugar in the form of glycogen to the muscles. After your complete workout of about 40-60 minutes your body used all sugars for energy, making it very unlikely that any stored fat was used. Now you leave the gym very tired and weak due to the body’s lacking sugars/carbohydrates. In the worse case scenario you lost weight but most of it was water, and because the body lacked carbohydrates muscle was used for energy. If this happens you lose weight, but it is the wrong kind of weight. You never want to lose muscle. Just fat! If you work out using my methods your body will use sugars for the resistance part of the routine and for only about six minutes at the start of your fat-burning session. During the remainder it will use stored fat (fatty acids) for energy.

Follow the guidelines without question, and you will see what a dramatic difference it will make in the rate your body sheds unwanted fat.

Remember, warmup first, stretch, resistance training, fat burning session, and then cool down for a couple of minutes.

If you want a personally designed weight loss program I can help you achieve your goals quickly and safely directly over the internet.

Johnnie D Jackow Sr is the author of 2 fitness books and he started offering his services on the internet in 1997 and since 1999 he has been rated one of the top weight loss and fitness professionals in the industry. Johnnie Jackow and the services he offers can be found on every major search engine in the WORLD. He has been approached and/or interviewed by several top TV stations and numerous stories have been aired and articles have been written about the online services he offers.

He has personally helped thousands of men and women achieve their fitness goals directly over the internet.

Visit Website: http://www.tbfinc.com

When it comes to poker, we have long lost the middle ground. The chances are one is either a star-struck poker-crazed gaming nut or a vehemently outspoken anti-poker puritan. My wife is the latter type. I’m trying to make the transition from the former category to a more balanced middle-of-the-road position.

Poker involves risk. Definitely. But which activity doesn’t?

People lose money playing poker. But is that the only activity in which the law-abiding taxpayers are parted from their hard earned cash as a result of their very own voluntary decisions?

The year was 1999. The month, November. The stock market was so red hot it seemed like nobody could do anything wrong. You just closed your eyes, picked a stock, and damn if the darn thing didn’t go up the very next day!

We sat down one night with my wife and discussed whether it made sense to keep our money in a savings account that earned three and a half percent a year when we knew a number of people who doubled up their money in stocks the year before. She grudgingly admitted that freezing our money in a savings account was not really the most rational thing to do.

So she allowed me to pull out $15,000 from our savings and various credit cards and open an account with one of the better known on-line brokerage houses.

December 1999 — I dived into the Wall Street with the enthusiasm of a kid in a toy store.

The first month I not only did not lose any money but actually made $500. I felt like I knew what I was doing.

January 2000 was even better - I’ve made 15% on our initial $15,000.

February 2000 was a monster - an eye-popping 20% return in that single month!

At that rate, our initial $15,000 would swell up to a cool million bucks within only eighteen months.

Then March 2000 arrived and … things started to change, to put it mildly.

Gone was the former elation of trades magically hitting the jack pot each and every time.

All of a sudden, all my positions were losing money. I had to admit to myself that perhaps we were all rushing headlong into the much-talked about “Bubble Burst.”

Midway through April, the bottom fell out. It was a rout.

The long-expected market collapse caught all investors in the midst of their American Dreams and we were no exception. I cashed out immediately, lucky enough to lose only two thousand dollars at the end.

Despite all that, nobody has offered to outlaw the stock market and folks are still plunking down their good cash on companies that they know zilch about. Even when we think we know what we are doing, the recent Enron and WorldCom corporate scandals prove how little control we actually do have on the final outcome.

To this day I’m wondering what would have happened if I started playing poker back in November 1999 with my initial $15,000 instead of playing the Wall Street.

At least in poker, what you see is what you get. When you lose, you lose, right there on the spot. But when you win, it is not like you think you win. You actually do win.

And there has never been a case when someone’s poker winnings became worthless years later because the organization that hosted the poker event was indicted in a corporate scandal.

I remember what a shoeshine guy at Grand Central once told me: “A lucky day today sir, yes indeed it is. My lucky day for sure,” he said with an obvious glee in the way he was applying the shoewax on my wingtips. When I probed a little he admitted I was his twelfth customer that day. Twelfth.

I figured, at a maximum of ten bucks a pair, the guy had made the princely sum of one hundred and twenty dollars and that was the best he was going to see for a long long time. That was his lucky day.

I wonder what luck really means if the returns on our luckiest days are limited by the very restrictions built into the nature of what we are doing.

In poker you need to know what you are doing and on top of it, must get lucky as well. But if my shoe shine guy had the same luck in a poker tournament that he had on that particular day in New York City he might have made a million and two hundred instead of just one hundred and twenty.

Preparing the mind for the challenges ahead requires calculated and educated risks whether you decide to play the stocks, shine shoes at the Grand Central or play poker at championship level. Luck helps not only the prepared minds but also those who take risks.

You need luck to win no matter what you do in life. But how big you can win if and when you do get lucky - that’s where the rub is. That’s why I still feel that for me playing low-limit weekend poker makes as much economic sense as playing the stocks.

I neither fancy becoming a full-time professional poker player nor assail against a good game with the fervor of a crusader. Loving every minute of a hobby in which I take calculated and limited risks is my middle ground and I’m staying there.

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Ugur Akinci, Ph.D. is a Creative Copywriter, Editor, an experienced and award-winning Technical Communicator specializing in fundraising packages, direct sales copy, web content, press releases and hi-tech documentation.

He has worked as a Technical Writer for Fortune 100 companies for the last 7 years.

You can reach him at writer111@gmail.com for a FREE consultation on all your copywriting needs.

Please visit his official web site http://www.writer111.com for customer testimonials and more information on his multidisciplinary background and career.

The last book he has edited: http://www.lulu.com/content/263630