THE ONE YEAR ILLUSTRATIONS CLUB

 Many years earlier, the psychologist B.F. Skinner had devised the operant conditioning chamber or “Skinner Box” in which a lever press by an animal triggered either a reinforcing stimulus such as delivery of food or water, or a punishing stimulus like a painful foot shock. Olds and Milner soon adapted the chamber so that a lever press would deliver direct brain stimulation through the implanted electrodes. What resulted was perhaps the most dramatic experiment in the history of behavioral neuroscience; rats would press the lever as many as 7,000 times per hour to stimulate their brains. They weren't stimulating a “curiosity center” at all-- this was a reward circuit, the activation of which was much more powerful than any natural stimulus. ~A series of amazing experiments revealed that rats preferred reward circuit stimulation to food (even when they were hungry) and water (even when they were thirsty). Self-stimulating male rats would ignore a female in heat and would repeatedly ...

      “A year ago I separated from my wife.” So far, his revelation is not that shocking; after all, it’s still believed that a third of marriages may end in divorce. What follows, however, is a little more startling. The nameless and faceless man proceeds to cite the reason for his failed marriage. He admits, “I left her for a younger, more attractive woman.”  A rather shallow admission, indeed. He then goes on to describe how his wife had allegedly let herself go.  His ex was flabby, unkempt, didn’t shave, and had droopy breasts,” he described, before adding, “I no longer found her attractive.”      He clearly wasn’t pulling any punches.  But while experts say that physical attraction isn’t the sole basis of a strong, lasting relationship, it is nonetheless still an important factor. The man longed for the beautiful woman his wife had once been.  Alas, he said, “Her now-faded beauty was only a memory.” It seeme...

 This story comes out of Houston....(May 2014) 17-year-old student has been found dead in a Texas hotel room just hours after celebrating her prom with school friends. Jacqueline Gomez's boyfriend called 911 at about 11am on Saturday to report that the teenager had stopped breathing. The couple had booked into Houston's Hyatt Hotel, where other students were also staying, at about pm. It is believed they had been drinking in their room before falling asleep. What's even more tragic is that her mom had told her "no" she could not go, but she snuck out to the prom anyway, if only she had known, her disobedience that night would cost her, her life, I think she may have listened, how about you?

  Don't Laugh at Me" is a song written by Allen Shamblin and Steve Seskin, and recorded by American country music artist Mark Wills. "Don't Laugh at Me" was a number 2 hit on the Billboard country charts. The song received Country Music Association nominations for Country Music Association's Single, Song and Video of the Year in 1998. Allen Shamblin was inspired to write the song after his daughter came home from school one day, telling him that she was being teased by other children at school because of her freckles. Wills has received letters from teachers and students who have said that they can identify with the song's story. According to him, "everyone can relate to [the song]…Everyone at some point in their life has been picked on, made fun of or put down."He told Billboard magazine that the song is "one of the strongest songs I've ever recorded in terms of dealing with life in general."

 One night a house caught fire and a young boy was forced to flee to the roof. The father stood on the ground below with outstretched arms, calling to his son, "Jump! I'll catch you." He knew the boy had to jump to save his life. All the boy could see, however, was flame, smoke, and blackness. As can be imagined, he was afraid to leave the roof. His father kept yelling: "Jump! I will catch you." But the boy protested, "Daddy, I can't see you." The father replied, "But I can see you and that's all that matters." The boy had not considered this, that his father could see him, at that point he put his faith in his father and the fear left him and the boy jumped and was caught by the net the fireman had set beneath him.

  In March 1981 Goodman had obtained his pilot's license and had bought his own airplane, a  Cessna 172 . On March 10, 1981, Goodman took a flight around  Chesapeake Bay  and the southern tip of the  Delmarva Peninsula . Without any warning, the plane's engine lost power. Goodman attempted to maneuver the aircraft back toward the airstrip in  Cape Charles, Virginia  to make an emergency landing. As he approached the runway, the plane flew through a low-hung set of power lines, crashed to the ground, and flipped over. Goodman broke his C-1 ( Atlas ) and C-2 ( Axis )  Cervical vertebrae , and was left fully  paralyzed . He was unable to breathe, talk, or swallow on his own and could only communicate by blinking his eyes. After initial treatment at a local hospital in nearby  Nassawadox, Virginia  Goodman was moved to Norfolk General in  Norfolk, Virginia , where surgery was performed. Goodman's sister, Pat Waldo, realized th...

 A group of players nobody wanted — the self-proclaimed 'Golden Misfits' — are heading to the Stanley Cup final. Ryan Reaves scored the game-winning goal, Marc-Andre Fleury made 31 saves and the expansion Vegas Golden Knights continued their improbable run by defeating the Winnipeg Jets 2-1 on Sunday to win the best-of-seven Western Conference final 4-1. A franchise that had just two players under contract at this time last year before filling out the rest of its initial roster with castoffs from the league's other 30 clubs in the expansion draft, is now just four wins from hockey's ultimate prize. "Everybody on this team has something to prove," said Reaves, a tough guy acquired from the Pittsburgh Penguins prior to February's trade deadline. "We call ourselves 'The Golden Misfits' for a reason. "We're doing a good job of proving everybody wrong." They certainly are.

 John Edwards found an enthusiastic following for his 2008 presidential bid, espousing a populist call for economic justice and the restoration of “America’s moral leadership.” To loyalists, it was more than political angle; Edwards campaigned at great personal sacrifice, traveling the country while his wife battled cancer. But scoops by a supermarket tabloid contrasted his high-mind rhetoric with base private behavior, the National Enquirer reported Edwards was having an affair with Rielle Hunter, (while his wife was struggling with cancer). Rielle Hunter was a former campaign worker, who was then pregnant. Sources told us Edwards was the father of the baby. Confronted with the report, Edwards lied, emphatically. He called the story “lies” and “tabloid trash.” He then engineered a cover-up, convincing an aide to publicly claim paternity of the baby. Six months later, the~Enquirer~caught Edwards in a Los Angeles-area hotel visiting Hunter and the baby. Up to that point, political i...

  Another “unsophisticated” robbery allowed Detroit detectives to ferret out the villain almost instantaneously. This green hornet apparently believed strongly enough in recycling to write his demand note on the back of a used envelope he had received. No, he didn’t remember to tear off the part inscribed with his name and residential address. Which made it quite convenient for the police to pick him up and arrest him. There is only one explanation for this type of behavior: Sin makes you stupid. When a Christian realizes this simple truism, human behavior becomes far easier to decipher.

  Los Angeles Times  In what at first seemed to be a fatality of two, in a severe collision off of the Hwy 5 in Pomona, a man was found dead at the scene of the crash, the other individual thought to be dead, was a blow up doll, used by Walter Crashaw, so he could use the car pool lane designated for two or more passengers. The irony is, the dummy had its seat belt on, but Walter did not and was thrown from the car and crushed by an oncoming vehicle. Sometimes in life, you have to wonder, who’s the dummy? He somehow thought it good to strap in the dummy in the passenger seat, but didn’t think it wise to strap in the dummy driving the car.

  He sat there twiddling his thumbs, watching the clock tick by, acting as if he was busy, being on commission of course meant being busy [or not] , another day of no business, No new loans originated, finally the clock hit 4pm, no money made that day, he was actually anxious to go off to his second job, at a pizza parlor, where he found himself: taking orders, stocking the salad bar, busing and serving tables and later on, scrubbing the toilets while being yelled at by the boss's daughter who was 23, considering his 43rd birthday had just passed, it was a hard pill to swallow. He remembered when he was an Escrow Officer with his own personal assistant and he was the one barking the orders. He remembered how he once was a Pastor with a flourishing congregation, good job, dignity, preaching in conferences…, how did he ever get to fall so low? Is a question he often asked himself…. That’s when the boyz from his old church walked in. Surely they had heard years before about how h...

 HE kicked off his career at the age of four by fronting his uncle’s band, becoming Oahu's youngest Elvis impersonator in the process. Ten years later, he was impersonating the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, as part of the Legends in Concert show. After graduating high school in 2003, he took his uncle's advice and moved to California to pursue a music career. After months of frustration, he met songwriter Phillip Lawrence, who convinced HIM to try his hand at writing songs for other artists. The two dubbed themselves the Smeezingtons and co-wrote “Long Distance,” which was recorded in 2008 by R&B singer Brandy. More offers arrived after that, and HE and Lawrence scored their first number one hit in 2009, when they co-authored Flo Rida's international smash "Right Round." After working a string of behind-the-scenes jobs -- including writing songs for Brandy, singing backup for the Sugababes, and impersonating Elvis -- HE put his name on top of the charts in 200...

 On January 28, 1986, the NASA shuttle orbiter mission STS-51-L and the tenth flight of Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-99) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members, which consisted of five NASA astronauts and two payload specialists. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 EST (16:39 UTC). The disintegration of the vehicle began after a joint in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff. The failure was caused by the fact that O-ring seals used in the joint were not designed to handle the unusually cold conditions that existed at this launch. The seals' failure caused a breach in the SRB joint, allowing pressurized burning gas from within the solid rocket motor to reach the out. Is there really any room in the universe for “chance”? While I was in the Marines, I worked in Aviation, a simple cotter pin valued at $4.00, missing to secure a nut, caused the crash of a $35 million d...

 Deon Sanders, outfielder for the Atlanta Braves and corner back for the Atlanta Falcons, is the only athlete to have hit a Major League home run and scored an NFL touchdown in the same week. Sanders grew up on the mean streets of Fort Myers, Fla., where exposure to some would-be athletes spurred him to make a success of himself.He explains: "I call them Idas. 'If I'da done this, I'd be making three million today...If I'da practiced a little harder, I'd be a superstar.' They were as fast as me when they were kids, but instead of working for their dreams they chose drugs and a life of street corners and excuses.

 There was an article listed in the lost-and-found column of a Midwestern newspaper: "Lost dog, please call if found, he has brown fur, some missing due to mange, a skin disease caused by parasite mites, he is blind in one eye, 80 % deaf, lame leg due to recent traffic accident, slightly arthritic. If you see him, he goes by the name of 'Lucky.'"

 Due to animosity between Jack and his wife, Lisa, Jack requested in his last Will & Testament, that he be buried with all his money. Lisa told her best friend about his wishes and she was aghast. Well the day of the funeral and burial finally came. As they were lowering the coffin down into the ground, Lisa's best friend couldn't help but ask Lisa, "so did you honor his wishes?" Lisa replied, "of course, what kind of woman do you think I am?!"  "A better woman than I", her friend respond.  Lisa said, "well, I had to honor his wishes, so I buried him with his wealth, I wrote him a check and placed it on his chest and if he can cash it where he's going, than he's more than welcome to it!"."

  When Robert Louis Stevenson was a boy he once remarked to his mother, "Momma, you can't be good without praying." "How do you know, Robert?" she asked. "Because I've tried!"

  WHY VENUS SPINS THE  WRONG WAY -AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL Our neighboring planet Venus is an oddball in many ways. For starters, it spins in the opposite direction from most other planets, including Earth, so that on Venus the sun rises in the west. Not that it happens often: a day there lasts a little more than 243 Earth-days, actually making it longer than a Venusian year, which is only about 224 Earth-days long. Many scientists believe that the long days are a result of the sun's strong pull on the planet. But scientists are still puzzled by Venus's retrograde, or backward, rotation. Evolution teaches that creation started by the "Big Bang Theory"; thence sending all sorts of particulars flying through the explosion through the momentum of a blast. If that were the case, the momentum of the blast, if we can somehow take a grand leap of faith that the blast created planets (big leap I know) than we can only conclude the planets would all be spinning in the same ...

 J.D. Rockefeller said, "I never would have been able to tithe the first million dollars I ever made if I had not tithed my first salary, which was $1.50 per week."

  We have nothing to do with how much ability we've got, or how little, but with what we do with what we have. The man with great talent is apt to be puffed up, and the man with little (talent) to belittle the little. Poor fools! God gives it, much or little. Our part is to be faithful, doing the level best with every bit and scrap. And we will be if Jesus' spirit controls. S.D. Gordon

 Actor Jack Klugman recalls being devastated at age 12 when his father died. Struggling for decades with depression over that loss, Klugman finally sought counseling. “It was then that I remembered that my father was the only one in my family who ever hugged me. The rest of my family stayed away from touching or hugging—especially my mother. Only my father was unashamed to show affection. My father taught me that showing your affection was not a sign of weakness but instead a sign of love.” Klugman says he passed his father's legacy on to his own two sons as well as his granddaughters. “Whenever I see them, we kiss and hug and show how fond we are of each other. I love it!”

 Lawyer and statesman Daniel Webster was a powerful orator who gave early evidence of his quick mind and way with words. One day Webster's father, who was to be absent from home, left Daniel and his brother Ezekiel specific work instructions. But on his return he found the task still undone, and questioned his sons about their idleness. "What have you been doing, Ezekiel?" he asked. "Nothing, sir." "Well, Daniel, what have you been doing?" "Helping Zeke, sir."

 Alfie Evans, 23-month-old who was the subject of a tragic court battle in England and passed away this past weekend:      "From an ocean away, Americans watched the heartbreaking story of Alfie Evans unfold in tragic detail this past weekend. After being informed by doctors that Alfie's neurological disorder would inevitably take his life, his parents were instructed that the only 'humane' course of action was to remove Alfie from a ventilator, stop feeding him, and let him die. But for days after being removed from life support, Alfie clung to life and his will to live inspired an army of supporters all around the world. I count myself among them.      "Despite multiple attempts, British courts time and again prohibited his parents from transporting the 23-month-old to Italy, where citizenship and free medical care would have been graciously provided at no cost to the family or taxpayers of Great Britain. Alfie's legal battle, while unsuccessful in r...

 Howard Schultz became chairman and CEO of Starbucks and expanded the company from its original three stores to more than 3000. Schultz was raised in a working-class family in  Brooklyn . His father was a high-school dropout who held a series of low-income jobs as factory worker, trucker, and cab driver. “We actually lived in federally subsidized housing,” he states. To make ends meet, his father often worked long hours. In spite of having little discretionary time, the elder Schultz carved out space for his son. “There were many days when my dad came home from 14-hour days of very physical labor, and the first thing he did was look for me. We would put our gloves on, go outside, and have a catch. Those moments between a father and son are so special and I will never forget.

  Bertoldo de Giovanni is a name even the most enthusiastic lover of art is unlikely to recognize. He was the pupil of Donatello, the greatest sculptor of his time, and he was the teacher of Michelangelo, the greatest sculptor of all time. Michelangelo was only 14 years old when he came to Bertoldo, but it was already obvious that he was enormously gifted. Bertoldo was wise enough to realize that gifted people are often tempted to coast rather than to grow, and therefore he kept trying to pressure his young prodigy to work seriously at his art. One day he came into the studio to find Michelangelo toying with a piece of sculpture far beneath his abilities. Bertoldo grabbed a hammer, stomped across the room, and smashed the work into tiny pieces, shouting this unforgettable message, "Michelangelo, talent is cheap; dedication is costly!" Words Michael Angelo would never forget!

  Ted Turner, the founder of the Cable News Network, aka CNN, MGM, TNT and other media outlets, claims, in a sense, that prayer was what pushed him away from his faith. Cable television mogul Ted Turner criticized fundamentalist Christianity and said Jesus probably would "be sick at his stomach" over the way his ideas have been "twisted," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Turner made his remarks Friday evening at a banquet in  Orlando ,  Fla. , where he was given an award by the American Humanist Association for his work on behalf of the environment and world peace. Turner said he had a strict Christian upbringing and at one time considered becoming a missionary. "I was saved seven or eight times," the newspaper quoted him as saying. But he said he became disenchanted with Christianity after his sister died, despite his prayers. Turner said the more he strayed from his faith, "the better I felt."

 In the Pryor Report, a Business Journal, they listed the top 7 virtues employers look for in their employees. At the top…Integrity. What qualities in employees irritate bosses the most? Burke Marketing Research asked executives in 100 of the nation's 1000 largest companies. At the top of the list was dishonesty. Marc Silbert, whose temporary employee firm commissioned the study, says, "If a company believes that an employee lacks integrity, all positive qualities, ranging from skill and experience to productivity and intelligence become meaningless. It’s interesting that in an age where dishonesty has become more prevalent than ever before, integrity, ironically enough; is still the most sought after virtue of any Business owner.

 102 Christians set sail on the Mayflower in the 17 th  Century and set sail for a new world, they believed it was God; that new world of course would be America. 102 Pilgrims had been crammed into a space about equal to that of a volleyball court. Compound that misery by the lack of light and fresh air (all hatches had to be battened down because of the stormy weather). Add to that a diet of dried pork, dried peas and dried fish and the stench of an even fouler bile and multiply it all by 66 days at sea.  It was answered that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties. And must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage. It was granted that the dangers were great, but not desperate and the difficulties were many, but not invincible…and all of them through the help of God, by fortitude and patience, might either be born or overcome…but their condition was not ordinary. Their ends were good and honorable, their calling lawful and urgen...

MCDONALDS - the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by  Richard and Maurice McDonald ; in 1948 they reorganized their business as a hamburger stand using production line principles. Businessman  Ray Kroc  joined the company as a franchise agent in 1955. He subsequently purchased the chain from the McDonald brothers and oversaw its worldwide growth.  The   McDonald  brothers did not see any reason to hold on to the Restaurant Chain and looked to short term profit as a better proposition. The rest, as they say....is History!  Be careful what you sell in life, you may live to regret it!

J.L. Kraft, head of the Kraft Cheese Corporation, who had given approximately 25% of his enormous income to Christian causes for many years, said, "The only investment I ever made which has paid consistently increasing dividends is the money I have given to the Lord."