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Category Archives: Inspiration
Obsolete Technology – yesterday – today – tomorrow
I ran into this video teaching us how to use a dial telephone…
… and that got me to think.
From today’s point of view, this is obviously funny; but I tried to imagine what things that we consider high-tech today will look really funny to my son when he is my age.
Speaking of my son – I have noticed one piece of technology that I grew up which he already has no personal experience with: the tick-tock of a clock. He might still know that a clock in the distant past did make such sounds but he has never heard that himself.
Or the first super-high-tech wrist watch I had – with red LED segmented numbers. These LEDs used so much power that I switch had to be pressed to turn then on – and off right away – to see the time. Very inconvenient at a party where you were fondling a glass of whiskey on the rocks trying to look as cool as your watch. Very uncool to put the glass down to be able to push the little button on your other wrist to realize that after two hours of looking cool you still did not have the nerve to talk to the cute brunette.
So, what’s the item with the biggest cool factor today? Maybe tablets like the iPad. I believe this is a good candidate to look ridiculous in 20 or 30 years. Imagine you lugging around a book sized slate – just like Moses did when he came down the mountain – just to access some information, or look up an address, while today (tomorrow) you just say your search term into the ether and the information materializes right in front of your eyes, or even better, you just pose the question in your mind and the answer is directly delivered to your own synapses via a synaptic interface – - who needs eyes – - maybe we have them closed at all times as all the experiences we have are virtual anyway. While we experience a rich virtual world our bodies are securely stored and fed through some tubes while at the same time acting as a power source for the computer system that runs the whole virtual world, and …. hold on, doesn’t that sound somehow familiar?
Posted in Computer, Culture, Inspiration, Internet, Philosophical, Science, Technology, Video
Tagged cute brunette, dial telephone, moses, power source, tick tock, virtual world, whiskey on the rocks, wrist watch
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In the face of imminent death
During my flying career, I have only once been really scared for an extended amount of time. Coming down from very calm air over Lake Isabella for a landing at Kern Airport I was hit by some serious turbulence.
I had the hardest time to keep the dirty side of the airplane down and at the same time initiating a very gently 180 degree turn – I knew where the air was calm and needed to get back there. As I write these lines clearly I did make it, but after coming out of that turbulence I had to land at the next available airport and get my shaking knees under control.
I am contrasting myself to the professionalism and calmness of the pilot of the US Airways Flight that went down in the Hudson river some two years ago, and I don’t look that good. Sure, he is a professional and trained for situations like that, but it is, nevertheless, admirable how he stayed calm in the face of his own possible death. From a very detached point of view clearly this was the correct thing to do, to have the best chances for survival. The outcome proved him right.
From this day forwards, as we all understand now, we will always ask ourselves, when we are getting upset about something – “how will this upset help me in this situation?” If you just remember to ask yourself this question, I am sure it will get you over this upset immediately.
Here, for you to admire, the events of the ditching of the US Airways flight in the Hudson River…
Posted in Emotional, Inspiration, Thoughts, Video
Tagged calm air, hudson river, lake isabella, professionalism, turbulence, us airways flight
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Cool – Open Source Hardware
I really want to build this tractor – then I can go around in winter here and clear driveways…
Posted in Creativity, Ideas, Inspiration, Technology, Video
Tagged driveways, open source hardware
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Teach every child about food
Just yesterday I ran into an old blog post on this site looking at Michelangelo’s David after a Big Mac Diet. What was most surprising to me was that there were comments that promoted ideas like “I had fast food as a kid and I’m OK!”
Less than a day later a TED talk by Jamie Oliver comes across my desk (email-inbox) addressing the same subject and actually showing how easy it can be to get David into his world known shape again.
There is only one thing where I believe Mr. Oliver goes wrong – and that is that we need the help of any government to handle the situation. While they were in charge the situation deteriorated so badly, how can be assume that they might be of any assistance to fix it? If you and I just do it right and be an example and don’t spread such misinformation as “I ate it and it did not hurt me” then the problem goes out with a whimper.
And if not then the situation also handles itself – in that the generation of low inner strength will die off – leaving the race with only the stronger elements. Guess I’m a bit pragmatic but I believe the wisdom of nature will find the right way to handle this – no need for misplaced emotional involvement.
Posted in Educational, Inspiration, Philosophical, Video, Wellness
Tagged diet, emotional involvement, fast food, inner strength, jamie oliver, michelangelo, Ted, whimper, Wisdom
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Inner Versus Outer Motivation
Many, many – - many – years ago I had a little friend, three actually. When I met the three nephews/nieces if my best buddy they were three/four/five years old. Harald, the middle one came out to the garden where my buddy and I were drinking beer to check out that new dude. One of the first test he conducted was “how does he react to pinching?” My reaction – “pinching back” – must have been the correct one because we became really good friends and grew up together until I finally had to leave the country (but that is a whole different story.)
One of the stories with Harald I remember was that he came up with the idea of washing my car. It was another beer-drinking session in the garden, a few grown-ups doing all the work and several kids playing in the garden as well – not drinking beer!
This is when Harald had the idea “Can I wash your car?” Generous as I was – and knowing that the car could really use that treatment – I said “Sure!” There was quite some commotion about finding a hose, sponges and other things that I did not know you needed to wash a car and an hour later my car was clean(er), and Harald was very proud about his job well done.
Several of the beer-drinking, session-attending adults now suggested that I should pay Harald something for his work. But even at that young age I was too smart for my own good and realized that this would not be a good thing. So, I politely declined to follow those recommendations and instead demonstrated Harald how much I appreciated his deed by becoming an even better friend.
Sometimes it takes the universe a long time to acknowledge the correctness of ones actions, and for this event I finally found the acknowledgment after so many years in form of a TED talk that I just have to share here.
Here we go – enjoy!
Posted in Creativity, Inspiration, Science, Video
Tagged acknowledgment, correctness, drinking beer, drinking session, motivation
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ISS – View out of the Cupola
There are always two sides to a coin, and today I had to reflect on these two side in regards my my anarchistic conviction.
It is easy and righteous to be an anarchist, and to help as little as possible for all those things most of us abhor. War, extortion, corruption, etc. But there are a few things that I like that these guys are doing, like helping to get pictures like this…
Tracy's View out of the Cupola on the ISS
This is just one sample of the pictures taken by astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock during his stay at the International Space Station just about 200 miles straight up. I can’t help considering other people who do not appreciate this venture out into space, just as I don’t appreciate beating up the Irakies or toppling a South American Dictator.
One of the most heard arguments against anarchy (in the sense of a society without a ruling government – not the definition of ‘chaos in the streets’) is “but somebody will have to build and maintain the roads!” On first glance that seems to be a valid argument, but thinking a bit further there are possibilities that don’t make it look so good. For one, a private builder who builds an area with houses he wants to sell, will make sure that there is a road that lets people get to these houses. Would make the houses probably a bit more expensive but considering that the buyer does not pay any taxes to a usually very inefficient government, the house with the street factored in would probably come cheaper than the house plus the taxes.
But what about highways and freeways? In part of the US we already have toll roads and they seem to be working just fine, and again the saving in taxes factored in, traveling might actually become cheaper. But lets assume that it would actually be more expensive to travel longer distances along toll roads – maybe other means of transportation would have been invented if they would be now more competitive without any government strong-arming the use of the road and car system. Maybe there would be already flying cars that don’t require expensive road building – or we would actually have the rolling roads of the early Heinlein – would THAT be cool!
Back to the space pictures. It might have take us a bit longer to reach the moon, but there is a good chance that we would have a flourishing space industry if there would have been no monopolistic government involved. A good chance that I might be able to afford a trip to Bigelow’s Space Hotel in one of Burt Rutan’s SpaceShip 4′s.
There would have been less people contributing to the cost of developing these space technologies, because right now each and every tax-paying citizen is a contributor. But if only the people who wanted it would be contributing, which is far less, it still could be more, as – first – an inefficient middle man is cut out of the loop, and – second – the people who do contribute really want it, and how much energy does does real intention add to the equation?
But despite all these ifs and whens I can still enjoy the great images from the ISS that were created with all our contributions – willing and unwilling – even forced. Here again the link to astronaut Wheelock’s images.
Startrek – The Voyage Home – Live
The following story just had to remind me of one of the best movies of the Star Trek series (not the TV show, the movies), number four – ‘The Voyage Home – where the crew goes back in time (the 80s), rescues a whale (Captain, there’ll be whales down here!) brings them back to the StarTrek time and saves mankind by having this whale communicate with a deep space probe that threatens our survival. All because we had killed of all the whales.
With acts like the one below we hopefully don’t need the StarTrek crew go back in time and have all their adventures – although I would definitely miss the scene with Kirk and Spock, in which Kirk explains that Spock had to much LDS in the 70s, explaining the reason for his unusual behavior.
Here now the story (thanks, Beverly)…
If you read a recent front page story from the San Francisco Chronicle, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth. A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallon Islands (outside the Golden Gate ) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her.
They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around as she was thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.
The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth said her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.
It is not really that surprising to me that somebody as a whale is able to demonstrate thankfulness to a rescuer. There are so many examples that whales or dolphins are not just a bit higher developed animals than dogs. Especially after reading the hitchhikers guide we know that the dolphins were smart enough to leave the planet before it was demolished to make way for a bypass, while humans were totally oblivious of that fact and perished.
If you read a recent front page story from the San Francisco Chronicle, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth. A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallon Islands (outside the Golden Gate ) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her. They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around as she was thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth said her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same. May you, and all those you love, be so blessed and fortunate to be surrounded by people who
will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you. And, may you always know the joy of giving and receiving gratitude.
will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you. And, may you always know the joy of giving and receiving gratitude.
Did Dougles Adams indeed channel current Patriots
Synchronicity can be a scary thing.
Having just finished the Iron Web by Larken Rose I ran into a short excerpt from one of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide books…
[An extraterrestrial robot and spaceship has just landed on earth. The robot steps out of the spaceship...]
“I come in peace,” it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, “take me to your Lizard.”
Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…”
“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”
“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
“I did,” said ford. “It is.”
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
“What?”
“I said,” said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, “have you got any gin?”
“I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.”
Ford shrugged again.
“Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,” he said. “They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.”
This great picture of today’s world of rulers and ruled finally prompts me to verbalize my thoughts on Mr. Adams. I do not want in any way diminish his accomplishments, but I think he was a medium channeling all these great pieces of wisdom packed into his books.
I watched, many years ago, after I was already totally enthralled by Mr. Adams nuggets of wisdom, a BBC show with and about Douglas Adams. It presented, amongst many other great info about the Hitchhiker’s Guide and it’s beginnings, some interviews with Mr. Adams. From his statements in these interviews there was no other possibility than that of external influence. The man being interviewed just did not seem to have the capacity to come up with mind-boggling wise answers to the question on how to learn to fly, which is, as any Douglas Adams reader knows, “You throw yourself to the ground – - – and miss.”
As said earlier, my intention is not to take away from Mr. Adams accomplishments, it just is in a little bit different arena. He was the man who picked up these gems of insight from all over the space-time continuum and packaged them in a form that is – and there is no other more fitting word – mind-boggling.
Just take the quote above – is there still anybody who does not see – at least for a moment – how ridiculous it is that we accept, without revolting, our political system of governmental lizards that everybody hates but votes for every few years nevertheless?
Back to the scary synchronicities I mentioned in the beginning – for me, finding this parable and reading the Iron Web, all within a few short day, is like an 11:11 event that breaks open the solidity of the universe and slaps the fact into my face that things can be seen very differently.
Posted in Culture, Inspiration, Politics
Tagged Arthur Dent, Democracy, Douglas Adams, Ford Prefect, Guide Books, hitchhikers guide, Iron Web, Lizards, Patriots, Spaceship
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Parents of High School Boys – Be Prepared!
The following true (?) story can probably be found many times on the internet, but I just have to record it here so that I can find it again when my son gets to that age and I need to jug my memory.
A father passing by his son’s bedroom was astonished to see that his bed was nicely made and everything was picked up. Then he saw an envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow that was addressed to ‘Dad.’
With the worst premonition he opened the envelope with trembling hands and read the letter.
Dear Dad,
It is with great regret and sorrow that I’m writing you. I had to elope with my new girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with Mom and you.
I have been finding real passion with Stacy and she is so nice.
But I knew you would not approve of her because of all her piercing, tattoos, tight motorcycle clothes and the fact that she is much older than I am. But it’ s not only the passion… Dad, she’s pregnant.
Stacy said that we will be very happy.
She owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter. We share a dream of having many more children.
Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn’t really hurt anyone. We’ll be growing it for ourselves and trading it with the other people that live nearby for cocaine and ecstasy.
In the meantime we will pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so Stacy can get better. She deserves it.
Don’t worry Dad. I’m 15 and I know how to take care of myself.
Someday I’m sure that we will be back to visit so that you can get to know your grandchildren.
Love,
Your Son JohnPS. Dad, none of the above is true. I’m over at Tommy’s house.
I Just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than a Report card that’s in my center desk drawer.
I love you. – Call me when it’s safe to come home.
Posted in Fun Stuff, Inspiration, Stories
Tagged Cocaine, Cure For Aids, Ecstasy, Firewood, Grandchildren, Marijuana, Motorcycle Clothes, New Girlfriend, Passion, School Boys
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