the great re-convergence.
http://www.ted.com/talks/niall_ferguson_the_6_killer_apps_of_prosperity.html
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will
1. "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"
The actual advice here is technically a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's "good uncle" Alex, but Vonnegut was nice enough to pass it on at speeches and in A Man Without A Country. Though he was sometimes derided as too gloomy and cynical, Vonnegut's most resonant messages have always been hopeful in the face of almost-certain doom. And his best advice seems almost ridiculously simple: Give your own happiness a bit of brainspace.
2. "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."
In Cat's Cradle, the narrator haplessly stumbles across the cynical, cultish figure Bokonon, who populates his religious writings with moronic, twee aphorisms. The great joke of Bokononism is that it forces meaning on what's essentially chaos, and Bokonon himself admits that his writings are lies. If the protagonist's trip to the island nation of San Lorenzo has any cosmic purpose, it's to catalyze a massive tragedy, but the experience makes him a devout Bokononist. It's a religion for people who believe religions are absurd, and an ideal one for Vonnegut-style humanists.
3. "Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand."
Another koan of sorts from Cat's Cradle and the Bokononist religion (which phrases many of its teachings as calypsos, as part of its absurdist bent), this piece of doggerel is simple and catchy, but it unpacks into a resonant, meaningful philosophy that reads as sympathetic to humanity, albeit from a removed, humoring, alien viewpoint. Man's just another animal, it implies, with his own peculiar instincts, and his own way of shutting them down. This is horrifically cynical when considered closely: If people deciding they understand the world is just another instinct, then enlightenment is little more than a pit-stop between insoluble questions, a necessary but ultimately meaningless way of taking a sanity break. At the same time, there's a kindness to Bokonon's belief that this is all inevitable and just part of being a person. Life is frustrating and full of pitfalls and dead ends, but everybody's gotta do it.
4. "There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind."
This line from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater comes as part of a baptismal speech the protagonist says he's planning for his neighbors' twins: "Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind." It's an odd speech to make over a couple of infants, but it's playful, sweet, yet keenly precise in its summation of everything a new addition to the planet should need to know. By narrowing down all his advice for the future down to a few simple words, Vonnegut emphasizes what's most important in life. At the same time, he lets his frustration with all the people who obviously don't get it leak through just a little.
5. "She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing."
A couple of pages into Cat's Cradle, protagonist Jonah/John recalls being hired to design and build a doghouse for a lady in Newport, R.I., who "claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly." With such knowledge, "she could not understand why anyone should be puzzled about what had been or about what was going to be." When Jonah shows her the doghouse's blueprint, she says she can't read it. He suggests taking it to her minister to pass along to God, who, when he finds a minute, will explain it "in a way that even you can understand." She fires him. Jonah recalls her with a bemused fondness, ending the anecdote with this Bokonon quote. It's a typical Vonnegut zinger that perfectly summarizes the inherent flaw of religious fundamentalism: No one really knows God's ways.
6. "Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'"
In this response to his own question—"Why bother?"—in Timequake, his last novel, Vonnegut doesn't give a tired response about the urge to create; instead, he offers a pointed answer about how writing (and reading) make a lonesome world a little less so. The idea of connectedness—familial and otherwise—ran through much of his work, and it's nice to see that toward the end of his career, he hadn't lost the feeling that words can have an intimate, powerful impact.
7. "There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too."
Though this quote comes from the World War II-centered Mother Night (published in 1961), its wisdom and ugly truth still ring. Vonnegut (who often said "The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected") was righteously skeptical about war, having famously survived the only one worth fighting in his lifetime. And it's never been more true: Left or right, Christian or Muslim, those convinced they're doing violence in service of a higher power and against an irretrievably inhuman enemy are the most dangerous creatures of all.
8. "Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her."
Vonnegut's excellent-but-underrated Slapstick (he himself graded it a "D") was inspired by his sister Alice, who died of cancer just days after her husband was killed in an accident. Vonnegut's assessment of Alice's character—both in this introduction and in her fictional stand-in, Eliza Mellon Swain—is glowing and remarkable, and in this quote from the book's introduction, he manages to swipe at a favorite enemy (organized religion) and quietly, humbly embrace someone he clearly still missed a lot.
9. "That is my principal objection to life, I think: It's too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes."
The narrator delivering this line at the end of the first chapter of Deadeye Dick is alluding both to his father's befriending of Hitler and his own accidental murder of his neighbor, but like so many of these quotes, it resonates well beyond its context. The underlying philosophy of Vonnegut's work was always that existence is capricious and senseless, a difficult sentiment that he captured time and again with a bemused shake of the head. Indeed, the idea that life is just a series of small decisions that culminate into some sort of "destiny" is maddening, because you could easily ruin it all simply by making the wrong one. Ordering the fish, stepping onto a balcony, booking the wrong flight, getting married—a single misstep, and you're done for. At least when you're dead, you don't have to make any more damn choices. Wherever Vonnegut is, he's no doubt grateful for that.
10. "Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak."
Vonnegut touchstones like life on Tralfamadore and the absurd Bokononist religion don't help people escape the world so much as see it with clearer reason, which probably had a lot to do with Vonnegut's education as a chemist and anthropologist. So it's unsurprising that in a "self-interview" for The Paris Review, collected in his non-fiction anthology Palm Sunday, he said the literary world should really be looking for talent among scientists and doctors. Even when taking part in such a stultifying, masturbatory exercise for a prestigious journal, Vonnegut was perfectly readable, because he never forgot where his true audience was.
11. "All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental."
In Vonnegut's final novel, 1997's Timequake, he interacts freely with Kilgore Trout and other fictional characters after the end of a "timequake," which forces humanity to re-enact an entire decade. (Trout winds up too worn out to exercise free will again.) Vonnegut writes his own fitting epigram for this fatalistic book: "All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental," which sounds more funny than grim. Vonnegut surrounds his characters—especially Trout—with meaninglessness and hopelessness, and gives them little reason for existing in the first place, but within that, they find liberty and courage.
12. "Why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the mooooooooooooon?"
Even when Vonnegut dared to propose a utopian scheme, it was a happily dysfunctional one. In Slapstick, Wilbur Swain wins the presidency with a scheme to eliminate loneliness by issuing people complicated middle names (he becomes Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain) which make them part of new extended families. He advises people to tell new relatives they hate, or members of other families asking for help: "Why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the mooooooooooooon?" Of course, this fails to prevent plagues, the breakdown of his government, and civil wars later in the story.
13. "So it goes."
Unlike many of these quotes, the repeated refrain from Vonnegut's classic Slaughterhouse-Five isn't notable for its unique wording so much as for how much emotion—and dismissal of emotion—it packs into three simple, world-weary words that simultaneously accept and dismiss everything. There's a reason this quote graced practically every elegy written for Vonnegut over the past two weeks (yes, including ours): It neatly encompasses a whole way of life. More crudely put: "Shit happens, and it's awful, but it's also okay. We deal with it because we have to."
14. "I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'science fiction' ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."
Vonnegut was as trenchant when talking about his life as when talking about life in general, and this quote from an essay in Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons is particularly apt; as he explains it, he wrote Player Piano while working for General Electric, "completely surrounded by machines and ideas for machines," which led him to put some ideas about machines on paper. Then it was published, "and I learned from the reviewers that I was a science-fiction writer." The entire essay is wry, hilarious, and biting, but this line stands out in particular as typifying the kind of snappishness that made Vonnegut's works so memorable.
15. "We must be careful about what we pretend to be."
In Mother Night, apolitical expatriate American playwright Howard W. Campbell, Jr. refashions himself as a Nazi propagandist in order to pass coded messages on to the U.S. generals and preserve his marriage to a German woman—their "nation of two," as he calls it. But in serving multiple masters, Campbell ends up ruining his life and becoming an unwitting inspiration to bigots. In his 1966 introduction to the paperback edition, Vonnegut underlines Mother Night's moral: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." That lesson springs to mind every time a comedian whose shtick relies on hoaxes and audience-baiting—or a political pundit who traffics in shock and hyperbole—gets hauled in front of the court of public opinion for pushing the act too far. Why can't people just say what they mean? It's a question Don Imus and Michael Richards—and maybe someday Ann Coulter—must ask themselves on their many sleepless nights.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/15-things-kurt-vonnegut-said-better-than-anyone-el,1858/
The actual advice here is technically a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's "good uncle" Alex, but Vonnegut was nice enough to pass it on at speeches and in A Man Without A Country. Though he was sometimes derided as too gloomy and cynical, Vonnegut's most resonant messages have always been hopeful in the face of almost-certain doom. And his best advice seems almost ridiculously simple: Give your own happiness a bit of brainspace.
2. "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."
In Cat's Cradle, the narrator haplessly stumbles across the cynical, cultish figure Bokonon, who populates his religious writings with moronic, twee aphorisms. The great joke of Bokononism is that it forces meaning on what's essentially chaos, and Bokonon himself admits that his writings are lies. If the protagonist's trip to the island nation of San Lorenzo has any cosmic purpose, it's to catalyze a massive tragedy, but the experience makes him a devout Bokononist. It's a religion for people who believe religions are absurd, and an ideal one for Vonnegut-style humanists.
3. "Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand."
Another koan of sorts from Cat's Cradle and the Bokononist religion (which phrases many of its teachings as calypsos, as part of its absurdist bent), this piece of doggerel is simple and catchy, but it unpacks into a resonant, meaningful philosophy that reads as sympathetic to humanity, albeit from a removed, humoring, alien viewpoint. Man's just another animal, it implies, with his own peculiar instincts, and his own way of shutting them down. This is horrifically cynical when considered closely: If people deciding they understand the world is just another instinct, then enlightenment is little more than a pit-stop between insoluble questions, a necessary but ultimately meaningless way of taking a sanity break. At the same time, there's a kindness to Bokonon's belief that this is all inevitable and just part of being a person. Life is frustrating and full of pitfalls and dead ends, but everybody's gotta do it.
4. "There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind."
This line from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater comes as part of a baptismal speech the protagonist says he's planning for his neighbors' twins: "Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind." It's an odd speech to make over a couple of infants, but it's playful, sweet, yet keenly precise in its summation of everything a new addition to the planet should need to know. By narrowing down all his advice for the future down to a few simple words, Vonnegut emphasizes what's most important in life. At the same time, he lets his frustration with all the people who obviously don't get it leak through just a little.
5. "She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing."
A couple of pages into Cat's Cradle, protagonist Jonah/John recalls being hired to design and build a doghouse for a lady in Newport, R.I., who "claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly." With such knowledge, "she could not understand why anyone should be puzzled about what had been or about what was going to be." When Jonah shows her the doghouse's blueprint, she says she can't read it. He suggests taking it to her minister to pass along to God, who, when he finds a minute, will explain it "in a way that even you can understand." She fires him. Jonah recalls her with a bemused fondness, ending the anecdote with this Bokonon quote. It's a typical Vonnegut zinger that perfectly summarizes the inherent flaw of religious fundamentalism: No one really knows God's ways.
6. "Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'"
In this response to his own question—"Why bother?"—in Timequake, his last novel, Vonnegut doesn't give a tired response about the urge to create; instead, he offers a pointed answer about how writing (and reading) make a lonesome world a little less so. The idea of connectedness—familial and otherwise—ran through much of his work, and it's nice to see that toward the end of his career, he hadn't lost the feeling that words can have an intimate, powerful impact.
7. "There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too."
Though this quote comes from the World War II-centered Mother Night (published in 1961), its wisdom and ugly truth still ring. Vonnegut (who often said "The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected") was righteously skeptical about war, having famously survived the only one worth fighting in his lifetime. And it's never been more true: Left or right, Christian or Muslim, those convinced they're doing violence in service of a higher power and against an irretrievably inhuman enemy are the most dangerous creatures of all.
8. "Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her."
Vonnegut's excellent-but-underrated Slapstick (he himself graded it a "D") was inspired by his sister Alice, who died of cancer just days after her husband was killed in an accident. Vonnegut's assessment of Alice's character—both in this introduction and in her fictional stand-in, Eliza Mellon Swain—is glowing and remarkable, and in this quote from the book's introduction, he manages to swipe at a favorite enemy (organized religion) and quietly, humbly embrace someone he clearly still missed a lot.
9. "That is my principal objection to life, I think: It's too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes."
The narrator delivering this line at the end of the first chapter of Deadeye Dick is alluding both to his father's befriending of Hitler and his own accidental murder of his neighbor, but like so many of these quotes, it resonates well beyond its context. The underlying philosophy of Vonnegut's work was always that existence is capricious and senseless, a difficult sentiment that he captured time and again with a bemused shake of the head. Indeed, the idea that life is just a series of small decisions that culminate into some sort of "destiny" is maddening, because you could easily ruin it all simply by making the wrong one. Ordering the fish, stepping onto a balcony, booking the wrong flight, getting married—a single misstep, and you're done for. At least when you're dead, you don't have to make any more damn choices. Wherever Vonnegut is, he's no doubt grateful for that.
10. "Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak."
Vonnegut touchstones like life on Tralfamadore and the absurd Bokononist religion don't help people escape the world so much as see it with clearer reason, which probably had a lot to do with Vonnegut's education as a chemist and anthropologist. So it's unsurprising that in a "self-interview" for The Paris Review, collected in his non-fiction anthology Palm Sunday, he said the literary world should really be looking for talent among scientists and doctors. Even when taking part in such a stultifying, masturbatory exercise for a prestigious journal, Vonnegut was perfectly readable, because he never forgot where his true audience was.
11. "All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental."
In Vonnegut's final novel, 1997's Timequake, he interacts freely with Kilgore Trout and other fictional characters after the end of a "timequake," which forces humanity to re-enact an entire decade. (Trout winds up too worn out to exercise free will again.) Vonnegut writes his own fitting epigram for this fatalistic book: "All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental," which sounds more funny than grim. Vonnegut surrounds his characters—especially Trout—with meaninglessness and hopelessness, and gives them little reason for existing in the first place, but within that, they find liberty and courage.
12. "Why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the mooooooooooooon?"
Even when Vonnegut dared to propose a utopian scheme, it was a happily dysfunctional one. In Slapstick, Wilbur Swain wins the presidency with a scheme to eliminate loneliness by issuing people complicated middle names (he becomes Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain) which make them part of new extended families. He advises people to tell new relatives they hate, or members of other families asking for help: "Why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the mooooooooooooon?" Of course, this fails to prevent plagues, the breakdown of his government, and civil wars later in the story.
13. "So it goes."
Unlike many of these quotes, the repeated refrain from Vonnegut's classic Slaughterhouse-Five isn't notable for its unique wording so much as for how much emotion—and dismissal of emotion—it packs into three simple, world-weary words that simultaneously accept and dismiss everything. There's a reason this quote graced practically every elegy written for Vonnegut over the past two weeks (yes, including ours): It neatly encompasses a whole way of life. More crudely put: "Shit happens, and it's awful, but it's also okay. We deal with it because we have to."
14. "I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'science fiction' ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."
Vonnegut was as trenchant when talking about his life as when talking about life in general, and this quote from an essay in Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons is particularly apt; as he explains it, he wrote Player Piano while working for General Electric, "completely surrounded by machines and ideas for machines," which led him to put some ideas about machines on paper. Then it was published, "and I learned from the reviewers that I was a science-fiction writer." The entire essay is wry, hilarious, and biting, but this line stands out in particular as typifying the kind of snappishness that made Vonnegut's works so memorable.
15. "We must be careful about what we pretend to be."
In Mother Night, apolitical expatriate American playwright Howard W. Campbell, Jr. refashions himself as a Nazi propagandist in order to pass coded messages on to the U.S. generals and preserve his marriage to a German woman—their "nation of two," as he calls it. But in serving multiple masters, Campbell ends up ruining his life and becoming an unwitting inspiration to bigots. In his 1966 introduction to the paperback edition, Vonnegut underlines Mother Night's moral: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." That lesson springs to mind every time a comedian whose shtick relies on hoaxes and audience-baiting—or a political pundit who traffics in shock and hyperbole—gets hauled in front of the court of public opinion for pushing the act too far. Why can't people just say what they mean? It's a question Don Imus and Michael Richards—and maybe someday Ann Coulter—must ask themselves on their many sleepless nights.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/15-things-kurt-vonnegut-said-better-than-anyone-el,1858/
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
The Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama, when asked what suprised him most about humanity, answered "Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. and then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.
50 rules kids won't learn in school -Charles Sykes
THE Rules!
1. Life is not fair. Get used to it.2. The real world won't care as much as your school does about your self-esteem. It'll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.
3. Sorry, you won't make sixty thousand dollars a year right out of high school. And you won't be a vice president or have a company car. You may even have to wear a uniform that doesn't have a designer label.
4. You are not entitled...
5. No matter what your daddy says, you are not a princess...
6. No, you cannot be everything you dream...
7. If you think our teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He won't have tenre, so he'll tend to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he's not going to ask you how you FEEL about it.
8. Your navel is not that interesting. Don't spend your life gazing at it.
9. Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn't.
10. Life is actually more like dodgeball than your gym teacher thinks.
11. After you graduate, you won't be competing against rivals who were raised to be wimps on the playground.
12. Humiliation is a part of life. Deal with it.
13. You're not going to the NBA, so hold off on the bling and spare us the attitude.
14. Looking like a slut does not empower you.
15. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity.
16. Your parents and your little brother are not as embarrassing as you think. What's embarrassing is ingratitude, rudeness, and sulkiness.
17. Your parents weren't as boring before as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, driving you around, saving for your education, cleaning up your room, and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are.
18. Life is not divided into semesters. And you don't get summer off.
more rules to follow...
19. It's not your parents' fault. If you screw up, you are responsible.
20. Smoking does not make you look cool....It makes you look moronic.
21. You're offended? So what? No, really. So what?
22. You are not a victim. So stop whining.
23. Someday you will have to grow up and actually move out of your parents' house.
24. Batman's girlfriend is right: "It's not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you."
25. Pi does not care what you think.
26. A moral compass does not come as standard equipment.
27. Your sexual organs were not meant to engage in higher-order thinking or decision making.
28. Somebody may be watching...
29. Learn to deal with hypocrisy.
30. Zero tolerance = zero common sense.
31. Naked people look different in real life.
32. Television is not real life.
33. Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.
34. Winners have a philosophy of life. So do losers.
35. If your butt has its own zip code, it's not because McDonald's forced you to eat all those Big Macs. If you smoke, it's not Joe Camel's fault.
36. You are not immortal.
37. Being connected does not mean you aren't clueless.
38. Look people in the eye when you meet them...
39. People in black-and-white movies were in color in real life. And no, the world did not begin when you were born.
40. Despite the billion-dollar campaign to turn your brain into tapioca pudding, try to learn to think clearly and logically.
41. You are not the first and you are not the only one who has gone through what you are going through.
42. Change the oil.
43. Don't let the successes of others depress you.
44. Your colleagues are not necessarily your friends, and your friends aren't your family.
45. Grown-ups forget how scary it is to be your age. Just remember: this too shall pass.
46. Check on the guinea pig in the basement.
47. You are not perfect, and you don't have to be.
48. Tell yourself the story of your life. Have a point.
49. Don't forget to say thank you.
50. Enjoy this while you can.
All our life we jump through hoops.
All our life we jump through hoops.
Often without asking why.
It’s easy to feel stuck – a small cog in a big machine.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
Don’t waste your life living someone else’s.
Don’t wait for permission.
Life is too short to do work that doesn’t matter to you.
Want your memoirs to be worth reading?
Make your choices your own. Be brave. Be inquisitive.
Stop using lack of money or experience as an excuse.
You don’t have to risk it all to explore new options.
You owe it to yourself to find work that makes you tick.
Our world is changing. Careers are changing.
Take advantage or keep your head down. You choose.
The winners are building lives on their own terms.
Take small leaps. Meet people. Ask for help. Save. Plan.
Change jobs. Build businesses. Go on BIG adventures.
Start Something You Love. It’s not easy. Push. Sweat.
No one ever changed the world by toeing the line.
You are capable of more than you realise.
This is no dress rehearsal. Make it count.
There will never be a perfect time.
And the first step is often the hardest.
So Stop Dreaming and Start Planning.
Do Something Different!
————————————
Escape the City
http://www.escapethecity.org/
Often without asking why.
It’s easy to feel stuck – a small cog in a big machine.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
Don’t waste your life living someone else’s.
Don’t wait for permission.
Life is too short to do work that doesn’t matter to you.
Want your memoirs to be worth reading?
Make your choices your own. Be brave. Be inquisitive.
Stop using lack of money or experience as an excuse.
You don’t have to risk it all to explore new options.
You owe it to yourself to find work that makes you tick.
Our world is changing. Careers are changing.
Take advantage or keep your head down. You choose.
The winners are building lives on their own terms.
Take small leaps. Meet people. Ask for help. Save. Plan.
Change jobs. Build businesses. Go on BIG adventures.
Start Something You Love. It’s not easy. Push. Sweat.
No one ever changed the world by toeing the line.
You are capable of more than you realise.
This is no dress rehearsal. Make it count.
There will never be a perfect time.
And the first step is often the hardest.
So Stop Dreaming and Start Planning.
Do Something Different!
————————————
Escape the City
http://www.escapethecity.org/
Sunday, October 9, 2011
In my life I love you more by John Lennon
"There are places I remember all my life
though some have changed
some forever not for better
some have gone and some remain
all these places have their moments
... with lovers and friends I still can recall
some are dead and some are living... in my life I've loved them all...
but of all these friends and lovers there is no one compares with you and these memories lose their meaning when i think of love as something you
Though I know I never lose affection for people and things that went before
I know i'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more."
- John Lennon
though some have changed
some forever not for better
some have gone and some remain
all these places have their moments
... with lovers and friends I still can recall
some are dead and some are living... in my life I've loved them all...
but of all these friends and lovers there is no one compares with you and these memories lose their meaning when i think of love as something you
Though I know I never lose affection for people and things that went before
I know i'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more."
- John Lennon
Thursday, October 6, 2011
I NEVER PLANNED MY LIFE
I never planned of my life, Until I started living with cancer. I realized of my dreams to live, Which made me glad without fear. I lived with a new hope, It made me strong and fearless. Its another life lesson- Fallen in my life as a mess. Everything is new now, My living style to my point of view. From all the people on earth, I am one of those few. My life is still in my control, Cancer doesnt take over me. Things don't always go rock and roll, Still I make it struggle free!
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
You Don’t Get to Choose What Happened. You Get to Choose Whether it Was Significant.
You Don’You Don’t Get to Choose What Happened. You Get to Choose Whether it Was Significant.t Get to Choose What Happened. You Get to Choose Whether it Was Significant.
http://www.ellsberg.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Perfect.pdf
http://www.ellsberg.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Perfect.pdf
I got my life back.
I got my life back.
Whereas before I was a mess, with moods all over the place and energy levels in the gutter, for the past four years since I initiated that challenge, I have felt energized, and in control of my life. After I completed the personal challenge, I now eat some refined sugar, and drink some coffee and alcohol again—but with much more moderation than before.
I’m thirty-four now, happy, and completely off all medications. Once my mental issues and moodswings were taken care of, I was able to turn my attention to getting my worklife, career, and finances in order. Over four years, I went from earning just over $8,000 in the worst year of my bipolar, to breaking the six-figure barrier in revenue for the first time last year, in a combination of freelance projects and my own book projects.
(I tell this story of my own journey of financial self-transformation, between the ages of 30-34, in my upcoming book The Education of Millionaires – though I’m not a millionaire—yet!)
Three and a half weeks after the challenge ended, in late May 2008, I went out on my first date with Jena. That first date was epic; we stayed up all night, telling each other our life stories. During the course of that night, I told her my story of struggling with and eventually overcoming bipolar.
Jena shared with me that she had a close friend during her teenage years, a brilliant musician and composer with a bright career ahead of her, who was bipolar. Jena played for me a hauntingly beautiful recording of the friend’s music. Jena told me, with tears, that the friend had not been able to share her full artistic gift to the world; the friend had cut her life off early at 22, through suicide.
When I finished my own story, Jena’s speech slowed down from our excited all-night story telling. She looked me in the eyes. Time around us seemed to slow down. She reached over, held my hand. She looked at me, and said: “I’m glad you made it, Michael.”
A year after that, we were engaged. This past July 2nd, we celebrated our one year wedding anniversary. Neither of us has ever been happier in our entire lives.
I often shed a tear when I contemplate that I came very close to taking my life, only a year before I met the love of my life, who is now my wife.
If you are in the dumps about a mental illness, please do not give up. There is light at the end of the tunnel. I know it may seem hopeless at times—it may seem like a darkness that never ends. But you can get through it. In fact, you might just be at the beginning of the final corner before the road turns to health, freedom and happiness.
Please, do not give up. You can do this.
Whereas before I was a mess, with moods all over the place and energy levels in the gutter, for the past four years since I initiated that challenge, I have felt energized, and in control of my life. After I completed the personal challenge, I now eat some refined sugar, and drink some coffee and alcohol again—but with much more moderation than before.
I’m thirty-four now, happy, and completely off all medications. Once my mental issues and moodswings were taken care of, I was able to turn my attention to getting my worklife, career, and finances in order. Over four years, I went from earning just over $8,000 in the worst year of my bipolar, to breaking the six-figure barrier in revenue for the first time last year, in a combination of freelance projects and my own book projects.
(I tell this story of my own journey of financial self-transformation, between the ages of 30-34, in my upcoming book The Education of Millionaires – though I’m not a millionaire—yet!)
Three and a half weeks after the challenge ended, in late May 2008, I went out on my first date with Jena. That first date was epic; we stayed up all night, telling each other our life stories. During the course of that night, I told her my story of struggling with and eventually overcoming bipolar.
Jena shared with me that she had a close friend during her teenage years, a brilliant musician and composer with a bright career ahead of her, who was bipolar. Jena played for me a hauntingly beautiful recording of the friend’s music. Jena told me, with tears, that the friend had not been able to share her full artistic gift to the world; the friend had cut her life off early at 22, through suicide.
When I finished my own story, Jena’s speech slowed down from our excited all-night story telling. She looked me in the eyes. Time around us seemed to slow down. She reached over, held my hand. She looked at me, and said: “I’m glad you made it, Michael.”
A year after that, we were engaged. This past July 2nd, we celebrated our one year wedding anniversary. Neither of us has ever been happier in our entire lives.
I often shed a tear when I contemplate that I came very close to taking my life, only a year before I met the love of my life, who is now my wife.
If you are in the dumps about a mental illness, please do not give up. There is light at the end of the tunnel. I know it may seem hopeless at times—it may seem like a darkness that never ends. But you can get through it. In fact, you might just be at the beginning of the final corner before the road turns to health, freedom and happiness.
Please, do not give up. You can do this.
***
Michael Ellsberg is the author of The Education of Millionaires: It’s Not What You Think, and It’s Not Too Late, which is launching from Penguin/Portfolio in September. It’s a bootstrapper’s guide to investing in your own human capital at any age. Michael sends manifestos, recommendations, tips, and other exclusive content to his private email list, which you can join at www.ellsberg.com. Connect with him on Twitter @MichaelEllsberg and on Facebook.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelellsberg/2011/07/18/how-i-overcame-bipolar-ii/7/
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.
~steve jobs
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
economics ~malcolm gladwell
One of the great forgotten facts about the United States is that not very long ago the wealthy weren't all that wealthy. Up until the 1960s, the gap between rich and poor in the United States was relatively narrow. In fact, in that era marginal tax rates in the highest income bracket were in excess of 90 percent. For every dollar you made above $250,000, you gave the government 90 cents. Today — with good reason — we regard tax rates that high as punitive and economically self-defeating. It is worth noting, though, that in the social and political commentary of the 1950s and 1960s there is scant evidence of wealthy people complaining about their situation. They paid their taxes and went about their business. Perhaps they saw the logic of the government's policy: There was a huge debt from World War II to be paid off, and interstates, public universities, and other public infrastructure projects to be built for the children of the baby boom. Or perhaps they were simply bashful. Wealth, after all, is as often the gift of good fortune as it is of design. For whatever reason, the wealthy of that era could have pushed for a world that more closely conformed to their self-interest and they chose not to. Today the wealthy have no such qualms. We have moved from a country of relative economic equality to a place where the gap between rich and poor is exceeded by only Singapore and Hong Kong. The rich have gone from being grateful for what they have to pushing for everything they can get. They have mastered the arts of whining and predation, without regard to logic or shame. In the end, this is the lesson of the NBA lockout. A man buys a basketball team as insurance on a real estate project, flips the franchise to a Russian billionaire when he wins the deal, and then — as both parties happily count their winnings — what lesson are we asked to draw?
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7021031/the-nets-nba-economics
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7021031/the-nets-nba-economics
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