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Minimizing Regret
Thinking about life lately and I keep coming back to solid basics that I have decided to live my life by. These include deciding to never live life in passive mode, never sitting back and just letting life happen to me.
I want to live a life with minimum regret. Thinking that I can’t be the only one who has this philosophy I Googled to see who else might share my view. Color me surprised when the first link I found was a video interview with Jeff Bezos on living with a framework of Minimizing Regret. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwG_qR6XmDQ
So here’s to letting those around me who impact me know it. Here’s to telling people you love them while you have the opportunity. Here’s to grabbing for the brass ring daily, to reaching for the stars and working your butt off on a goal. Here’s to living my life to it’s fullest.
…” guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.”- Andy Dufresne – Shawshank Redemption
Sharing
For as long as I can remember I was schooled and saw others schooled in the art of sharing. When my son was younger I can remember reminding him to share his toys with other children. Extra piece of food at a meal? Share it. See someone who needs something you have? Share it. It’s something I always believed helped make us better people in the long run.
Now as an adult I realize that society has changed and sharing is now more suspect than not.
So why now am I even bothering to keep doing so? Like most of the living I have had decades of life altering experiences , many heart wrenching life stopping moments and every thing that can be experience between. I recently decided to change my life in more ways then one.
I changed my lifestyle to a more healthful one, changed my personal life to leave behind baggage I’ve held on to way too long, changed my career path and decided to expand my horizons about how I define sharing.
So what is the definition of sharing?
- To divide and parcel out in shares; apportion.
- To participate in, use, enjoy, or experience jointly or in turns.
- To relate (a secret or experience, for example) to another or others.
- To accord a share in (something) to another or others.
Basically for me sharing is the new way I tithe back to society. I use to tithe to the religious organization I was reared under and with. Then as I became more aware I tithed to the local homeless shelters and food banks. Then domestic abuse shelters and finally I found what works best for me.
Everyday I try to tithe 10% of my waking hours and a 10% of my income to those around me. It might be the down on their luck couple at Circle K without enough gas money, it might be part of the lunch I brought, it might be the smile I share but basically it’s something I offer and experience daily.
Sharing your smile, lunch, a book or just a joke which can brighten your day more than you realize. So what if occasionally you encounter nothing but negative around you and feel like not bothering. Share something and feel the difference around you!
Here’s to the power of sharing!
In honor of Bill Austin
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~ Kahlil Gibran
The world lost a great man this morning. My friend and past work partner has left us here and has ventured forward to the next great adventure in his life cycle.
Rest in peace Bill, you will forever live on in the lives of the many people you have touched in your lifetime.
Who was Bill? He was a kind, gentle soul who helped everyone he met. He believed in the best in everyone. And he was one of the most intelligent people I have ever met.
Bill was the Inventor of Record for the following US patents:
7,177,819 Wireless intelligent real estate electronic lock box
6,624,742 Wireless intelligent real estate sign and electronic lock box
6,487,180 Personal information system using proximity-based short-range wireless links
6,434,158 Entryway system using proximity-based short-range wireless links
6,424,623 Virtual queuing system using proximity-based short-range wireless links
4,284,834 Diethynyl aromatic hydrocarbons which homopolymerize and char efficiently after cure
4,180,649 Homopolymerizable acetylene-terminated tetraimines and process for making same
The polygot web
Mapping the internet as it goes truly global (Image: Matthew Hurst/SPL)
Imagine what browsing the web would be like if you had to type out addresses in characters you don’t recognise, from a language you don’t speak. It’s a nightmare that will end for hundreds of millions of people in 2010, when the first web addresses written entirely in non-Latin characters come online.
Net regulator ICANN – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – conceded in October that more than half of the 1.6 billion people online use languages with scripts not fully compatible with the Latin alphabet. It is now accepting applications for the first non-Latin top level domains (TLDs) – the part of an address after the final “dot”. The first national domains, counterparts of .uk or .au, should go live in early 2010. So far, 12 nations, using six different scripts, have applied and some have proudly revealed their desired TLD and given a preview of what the future web will look like.
The first Arabic domain is likely to be Egypt’s and in Russia orders are already being taken for the country’s hoped-for new TLD. The address HOBЫЙyЧеНЫЙ.pф – a rough translation of “newscientist” with the Cyrillic domain that stands for Russian Federation – can be registered today.
The Geography of the U.S. Recession
Animated time-lapse map of county-by-county unemployment rates in the U.S. since January 2007. Jarring.
Evolution of unemployment in the US, down to the county, from 2007 to 2009
http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html
Forbidden City, Beijing, China
, originally uploaded by Nocturnales.
Twitter and Mobfeeds
Stephen Fry - Beloved Actor, Writer, British Tweeter
Those 140 little characters, perfect for getting to the point. Perfect for sharing. Perfect in this time of bullet point explanations in our mile a minute society.
Yep, for those of you that know me, you know I’m a big fan of the micro-blogging site Twitter. As soon as I saw it in action in 2008, I knew it would grow and attract millions.
I’m an information junkie, a resource sharing, technology and society learning, walking talking encyclopedia of facts and knowledge about the use of technology and society’s future. Let me translate in TwitterSpeak: “Early Adopter, who is passionate about learning and sharing information about technology, society and our future.”
While I love it for all those reasons and more, I also knew about the dark side that would soon appear when it reached critical mass. Human nature has a way of showing its dark side with or without accountability for its actions. Always has and I think it always will.
When you live, work and breathe technology for decades like I have, you see the stuff that is not always public to the masses. You see the virtual fights that start up over a difference of opinion and you see the nasty behavior of those who feel shielded behind a keyboard. Years ago it was almost always done behind an alias that would take a while to track to a person’s name.
So along comes Facebook, and they required “real” names and “real” email accounts. Once that started to become the norm you could see the shift hitting the web. People started using real names and real connections to themselves.
Now we have virtual fights happening everywhere, but more and more frequently on Twitter. It starts as simply as one person who says the mildest things about a celebrity, and are attacked by folks who believe these celebrities to be demi-gods of our society. I mention this due to the crazy event that has happened over the last few days on Twitter.
Stephen Fry is a celebrity in Europe and throughout the World. He is also one of the most celebrated godfather’s of British twitters. Finally, he is a self-admitted individual who suffers from a bipolar disorder.
Another Twitter user named Richard tweeted this tweet: “I underdstand @stephenfry‘s tweets but, much as I admire and adore the chap, they are a bit… boring…. (sorry Stephen) “
And so it started. What appear to be mild exchanges between a celebrity and a fan; turned into several internationally reported articles from the mainstream world press. While also tumbling out of control with anger, hatred and bile in the Tweetesphere for days.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8335793.stm – Fry ponders leaving Twitter sitehttp://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=7178&edition=2&ttl=20091101134401
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8336425.stm – Fry ends row with Twitter critic
The exchange:
STEPHEN FRY: @brumplum whereas yours are so fascinating I can barely contain my fluids.
RICHARD: @stephenfry I shall have to put more effort into fluid-extraction! *blushes at the thought of S.F. reading my wibbles*
RICHARD: My life is complete, @stephenfry has @ replied me, rapidly followed by blocking me. My previous comment clearly hit him hard. Sorry.
STEPHEN FRY: @brumplum You’ve convinced me. I’m obviously not good enough. I retire from Twitter henceforward. Bye everyone.
STEPHEN FRY: Think I may have to give up on Twitter. Too much aggression and unkindness around. Pity. Well, it’s been fun.
The fallout:
Richard was besieged on his blog, twitter and email from fans of Stephen’s worldwide. The BBC picked up the story, radio stations and talk stations picked it up. Stephen was going to quit Twitter and it was all due to one comment.
Hours went by and Twitter was awash with the shock and anger generally used during a mob rush over human right infractions. A Twitter Storm erupted and it appeared folks couldn’t be meaner or nastier if they were screaming at each other at a KKK rally in the Deep South.
Two days later and people are still adding comments about the incident, releasing steady streams of anger, frustration and bile. The two primary individuals involved however, have apologized and moved on. It’s only the captive audience of folks out there that can’t move on.
The future:
It’s official in my mind; the lid is officially off our ids. What is the id you might ask? It’s one of the parts of how our personalities develop according to Freud; “ The id wants whatever feels good at the time, with no consideration for the reality of the situation.”
You can expect to see more and more virtual exchanges that have mobfeed mentality erupt. Only in the future, you will also see someone who doesn’t have any self-control or control of their own disorder, eventually harm another person over it. Someone who will combine their internal conflicts with the mobfeed mentality and will track down the person who they perceive did them harm. As we continue to live our lives in public, expect all aspects of the dark side within to start to surface as we continue evolving with the use of technology.
I guarantee it. Laws haven’t kept up, social etiquette hasn’t kept up, foundation building in our youth hasn’t kept up and the organizations leading the way haven’t done so with any morale compass. Why would society as a whole when the foundation needs such drastic repair?
We are reaching a tipping point in society, a point in which it might be too late to turn it around. What are you going to do about it? Who are you going to start the conversation with to start turning it around? Do you even notice or care?
My Subscriptions – Posterous
I love the bay area, it’s such a beautiful place to visit.
Hong Kong View from Victoria Peak
Hong Kong View from Victoria Peak, originally uploaded by jhandelman.
On the list to visit before relocating to Europe
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