Wasted Too Much Time With The Dark Knight

Posted on by
Reply

Link Dump today, I was busy studying the different aspects of the Joker and forgot to write something. Movie was a bit bland wouldn’t recommend it without Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker, he literally carried this movie for me. So I’ll leave some of the things I found of interest the past 2 weeks.

I-Power is an interesting idea from Kevin Rose. Basically, the idea is to add background software to the Iphone and hardware in your home that acts as switches. The Iphone sends out a gps signal that registers on the hardware when you leave the range it shuts everything off and when you enter it comes back on.

Content and Community video from Gary Vaynerchuk, an amazing guy, is something I enjoy because he cuts out the BS. He gives it to you straight, it’s not about you it’s about the customer. This applies to life not just a vlog.

20 Strategies to Defeat the Urge to Do a Useless Task over at Zen Habits something that really strikes a chord with me. Recently, I was asked how I manage so many social media sites, approximately a dozen. I replied with, “I guess I’ve just become atuned to doing it.” This lists the processes that I use and some I don’t, it lets you have some flexibitility.

Innovation Step By Step Instructions from Musing on Marketing provides a pretty simple guide to innovation. It’s something that anyone looking to innovate a market should read. I plan on looking at it when I need to clear my mind and drop back to the basics.

Forrest Gump: How to Build Your Self-Confidence over at Success Soul is about being creative, confident, and how to lead. It shows the values that truely matter, not the knowledge that we are forced to believe matters. It is there to prove that you can do what you want and the wisdom all came from Forrest’s lips.

Well, that’s what I have for you tonight, be back with new stuff on Friday.

The Three Hierarchical Layers Of Books

Posted on by
5

My friend, Glenn, over at My Adventure to Enlightenment is studying-abroad this semester in Morocco. He’ll be leaving in a few weeks and realized he only has room for roughly 6 books in his luggage. He is looking for books that have re-readability, provoke deep, challenging thought, and he is seeking non-fiction. This made me think what determines re-readability in a non-fiction text.

The Personal Library
The Quantum-Library
The Anti-Library

The Personal Library is a the basic layer containing all of your possessed books and other literary works. It possesses those that you have read, re-read, and have yet to read. For the separation of the layers this is the only layer that contains books that you have read only once.

The Anti-Library is something that has become a bit of a buzz word after being mentioned in Nassim Taleb’s, The Black Swan. He quote’s Umberto Eco on his view of a library(quote provided below). It is the layer that holds text that you have yet to read.

‘”Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight read-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an anti-library.”‘

However, there is another layer that is not discussed as of yet. It contains the texts that you have read, but ultimate meaning still eludes it’s readers. A book that shifts meaning depending on the perspective used to percieve it’s words. A layer that contains the ultimate in re-readability. This layer is like a movie, you watch it once and you enjoy it, you watch it several more times and you notice several subtle nuances, and the longer you re-watch the more you notice. These are the text’s that he is wanting to pack.

The Quantum-Library is the layer that co-exists as a member of both the Library and the Anti-Library. It is something you may have read, but when read again with a different perspective it exists in another form. These type’s of books are the ultimate for a bibliophile. It is the layer described above and contains the texts that you re-read.

So if you know of any texts that exist in the Quantum layer leave a comment here or over at Glenn’s blog he’d really appreciate it.

Addendum:

Seeing people come in from Zenpundit, Jay@Soob, OZ Deichman, and Ace Hanna, I have added my own list with reasons for their selection.

Why I Like To Think Of The Glass As Half-Empty

Posted on by
Reply

I thought of this Saturday as I was talking to a friend about my job and the other things that I have plans for in the near months. I’ve spent the last several months looking for problems/flaws in certain ideas. I realized that the idea of the half-full/half-empty glass question is flawed, while talking to him. This logic may be flawed as it was thought up in a pessimistic manner.

The logic of asking if the glass is half-full/half-empty is normally used to determine if a person is optimistic or pessimistic. Generally, pessimism is frowned upon when you are asked this question, however it may be flawed. The flaw in the question, is that I don’t think you gain more from being an optimist. Let me explain this more thoroughly.

If your ever out at a restaurant, the waiter normally asks you if you would like to have your glass refilled. This is were the question frays, if you see it as half-full your more likely to say no thanks, however, if it’s half-empty you’ll want it refilled. If you replace the liquid with ambition, would you not want to have more? Yet, many would say no, because they don’t need anymore; they are content with what we have. I say look at it half-empty and ask for more.

Ambition is something that you can never have enough of. So, I want you to go out; and every time you see your glass as half-full, know you need to see it as half-empty. Go after your dreams; be optimistic because your a pessimist with as much ambition as you can handle. You can accomplish your dreams just don’t be so pessimistic as to dismiss them.

Acknowledging Personal Truths Are Not The Truths Of Others

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been seeing this recurring theme of intolerance pop-up almost non-stop in current media. We have the ’08 election and are constantly badgered with views of racism, sexism, ageism, and religious intolerance. This is constant in modern life, no matter what you do, you will come across someone with a very different perspective on some subject.

The story that really brought this idea to fruition in me is that I saw an interview with two 14 year-old girls on television. These girls were kicked off of a bus in Portland last year for kissing by the bus driver who called them ‘sickos’. He didn’t bother to wait to get to the next bus stop. This was someone who was forcing his opinion against homosexuality because he saw it as a truth, in doing so he impeded the girls’ rights.

The election has been wrought with constant bipolar truths that are no doubt going to stay in the mainstream media until at least November. Most of them originating in the Democratic Primaries just to market to the masses on one side of the truth. You have “Hillary is a woman, a woman can’t run the country”, “Barrack is Muslim(not true), he’s going to sell this country out to the terrorists”, “McCain is too old to be president, he’ll die in office”, “Barrack is like Rev. Wright”, and “A black man isn’t capable of running this country, he’ll turn it into a ghetto”, all of these have been either explicitly or implicitly distributed by the media. Is this the representation of the beliefs of everyone in the country? No, they are marketing to their audiences, the only problem is that diffusion has occurred in media and it spreads, having it reach the people that share the other side of the truth.

If your trying to sell something as truth, you have to realize that what your truth is opinion only. As you age, however, your opinion shall become more refined; it needs a proper base to do so. So try to reflect on your views and the flip-side of them. You may be the intolerant bastard who you despise.

Where I Plan On Going

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve recently become encumbered with several other projects that take priority over the blog. That paired with the fact that the works that I have complete, I feel aren’t worth my time and ultimately yours. So, I’m going to update you on the progression of where I see the blog going and provide a link dump to some content I enjoyed in the last couple of weeks.

I plan on keeping the schedule of 2 posts per week, Monday and Friday, however occasionally it will be a link dump or something else. I plan on writing about an innovative or inspirational person once a month and also about items that I found innovative. So I’ll get along to the link dump.

The 7 Secrets to Warren Buffet’s Happy and Simple Life over at Success Soul looks into the 7 rules that Warren Buffet lives by. Most of this are about living a simple life and not becoming jaded by fame or fortune. Pretty interesting post about the richest man in the world.

11 Ways to Build an Extraordinary Life over at Steve-Olson looks at 11 things that your going to want out of life and he sums them up perfectly. This is how I live and it’s kind of cool to see this in text. It kind of tells me that I’m pointed in the right direction, but I can still advance further.

25 Visionaries Who Created Empires from Virtually Nothing at Business Pundit looks at some of the biggest names in the world of early industrial business to computers to entertainment. This is missing several people that I find inspirational, however, they didn’t create empires. Several of the people on this list are actual on my list of innovative and inspirational people.

A post at the NY Times on Web Literacy vs Conventional Literacy. This is pretty interesting as several of my friends and I, all in our late-teens to early-twenties work both sides of the line; we read books regularly and we stay up-to-date with blogs and other web sources. I actually would rather read a book than multiple pages of an e-book or large source of data.

And finally just a really interesting idea, TechCrunch brought up an interesting project for people. They asked for A Dead Simple Web Tablet after hearing about a rumor about Apple working on one for sometime this Fall. So they posed the question to the people if they could design a thin tablet that runs linux and uses Firefox as it’s main use.

Your Pouring The Wrong Way

Posted on by
Reply

[I’m sorry for any ranting and poor writing this subject is just to dire.]

Wednesday, June 23, the Housing Bill was passed through Congress and the House. I’ve reviewed what little information they are giving the public and it’s only going to affect a small majority of homeowners, approximately 400,000. The main benefactors to this bill, however, are Frannie, Freddie and other lenders. The fact still stands that overtime the average American is going to be taxed for the problems of others

The bill will offer bailouts on houses up to $550,000 which in most cases would be relatively higher than median pricing in any area,  with exceptions for a few areas (i.e. California). This is just ridiculous; if you’re going to offer this to former defaulters you’re a fucking retard, or a member of Congress. This is a horrible incentive to be offering, it’s just going to show them that they weren’t responsible for their problems, each party will point the finger at the other.

I think someone should have thought this thing through, at 600 pages you would think that it might be worth something, yet nothing except tying the government to corporations. I think if anything we need to bolster economic centers of growth but we can’t be bailing people out for every problem, yeah I’m calling you out Dems. We need to develop a plan that can actually help rather than just boost morale for a few months. We also need to show that we don’t support weak economic decisions by people, how about starting to teach basic personal finance and economics in our Middle and High Schools.

Our lending market filled itself with greed and ditched common sense; they offered poorly qualified people opportunities that they could never afford. These people only thought about margins and not about the chance that everyone else would be going after the same niche in the market, sub-prime borrowers. Now we, the American public, get our asses taxed off until we default or our jobs get taxed to the brink and they collapse leaving us jobless and then we default. This isn’t going to help it’s just there to ease the trip down.

So it looks like I’m going to have fun as a responsible spender over the next several decades. Hooray for the assholes back in the 90’s and early-oughts, for flipping me and my generation over and fucking us in the ass. It really fucking stings to know that simplicity and release from branding, no matter how non-conformist, doesn’t help you separate far enough to escape bailing out the people bound to consumption. It’s time to stop praying for the money to come in, and learn responsibility for your actions.

It’s Not About You

Posted on by
Reply

I got to thinking earlier, “Why fight against another aggressor when it’s only going to elevate both parties aggressive stature?” Why not just sit back and let them remain aggressive and feed you with hints at weakness? An overly aggressive party could become reckless and divulge information because they became overly focused on landing a blow; however if you too are acting just as aggressively you may miss your chance. We all need to just slow the fuck down and listen to the clues.

Atheists get a bad rap because of the radical few, who vocally protest meaningless shit. If you look at the Newdow v Congress was it necessary to protest against the words “one nation under God”, yes it may have been his constitutional right; however is there any true harm to be brought forth from these words. His claim actually brings forth a stigma against atheists because he became vocal it added fuel to the fire of Christian aggression. The same amendment contains freedom of speech or the freedom to remain silent. I am just calling for a rescission of aggression in the atheists motion for the truth. Let the Christian’s aggression lead to there own gaffes.

This same principle can be applied to politics in broad or even warfare. You need to stay defensive and alert of your enemies tactics and where their coming from next. If your right-wing read The New Yorker and the Huffington Post; if your left-wing watch FOX, stay attuned to where their coming from be objective about it. This gives you the ability to strike them where their weak, or deflect their blows back.

“So just shut the fuck up and listen.”

This guy has been doing that for several weeks and it’s amazing what he overhears and quotes. He also is probably more knowledgeable about the strategic and religious flaws in this post.

P.S. I’m a right-wing Athiest.