Sean Shadmand

Just get up and travel the world already!

Chris Guillebeau, blogger for chrisguillebeau.com, confronts those asked why they don’t just quit their job and travel around the world. It’s blunt, frank and fun. Sure it may sound crazy, but maybe – just maybe – it isn’t. I sure hope one day I have the balls or tenacity to just get up and go!

Here are some rebutels he addresses:

“I don’t have money to travel.”
“The rest of the world is dangerous.”
“I like staying at home.”
I’ll do this kind of stuff when I retire (or at some other distant point in the future).

And some question you may have to ask yourself:

1) Am I satisfied with my work? Does it meet my needs and fulfill my desires?
2) Think back to the times you have left your home country. What did you learn on those trips? Do you think you have more to learn?
3) If you could go anywhere in the world, where would that be? (Don’t think about reasons why you can’t go there.)
4) What are your financial priorities?

You can read the full break down here:
http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/why-you-should-quit-your-job-and-travel-around-the-world/

Peace is the ultimate aligment of interests

The reason to promote peace, even in the face of threatening obstacles, is important to a democracy as it aligns interests of the people’s want for peace with the politicians interest for re-election, popularity, success and credibility.

If a powerful person does not promote peace and does not make it their primary platform with domestic and international policy the politician is put in a precarious position. Not to say any other platform chosen was not created with the intent to do their best to preserve the way of life of their populous, but all other platforms do not align interests over time if and when more obstacles present themselves.

If a person’s platform finds itself on the side of promoting a form of proactive defense or waging war then that person is put in a position in which their credibility is at stake if it is ever proven that peace could have been a better option. The need to prove that peace was not an option or is not a clear path can easily become a new objective and from one compromise to another a person can invariably end up finding themselves trying to prove that there is a need for force which may take either require more force or the framing of negative events to gain puplic cohesion. One decision is made after another and then the allowance of desctive act to prove the need for defese may be the only way to show the validity of ones position.

one thing leads to another and now in order to protct someone you need them to get hurt to allow you to protect them,…seems crazy well look at glenn beck or rush limbagh who have already openly asked ofr destruction or failure to prive they are right. It is an example of misalignment..

Now if eeryone pushed diplomacy and peice the only way they go wrong is if something goes wrong, so in no way would they wantthat.to gain political postivity they must kee things safe. Safteyy and diplomacy align interst between community and leaders. it alwasy ends u p this way, is MLK or JFK remembered for violence who has been hitler, stalin, mcarthy. DOnt let hstory repreat itself and learn from past postivity, and diplomacy in teh face of negativity and violence has always been the corner stone of every philosphy, and histories ideal them all. nothing wirth while is easy.

“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.”

– Henry David Thoreau

And then man created life

Scientest have combined the building blocks of life and have been able to over come some major hurdles in the effort to create life from scratch. By creating a container for the life to reside in, a way to reproduce, and a way to convert raw materials to energy man can indeed create life if only for a few hours at a time. Scientist have made a confident claim this week that they expect someone to create artificial life from scratch, albeit microscopic at best, within 3-10 years.

Willard Wiggen: The something in nothing

Have you heard of this guy? He creates sculptures that are microscopic to the naked eye. The end result looks so great it hard to put ut all together and realize he is using materials like eye lashes to create these works of art.

His work and physical capabilities to produc such work “has baffled medical science and has been the subject of many discussions among micro-surgeons, nano-technologists and at universities worldwide. His work is both inspirational and ground breaking in both artistic and scientific spheres.”

You can see him on Conan O’brian here »

The middle

im in the corner
sitting is easy
thinking of the things i wanted to be
math is upon us
and lisp is he speaking
the brightes of sky but the darkest of day

tight lips do catch us
and whispeirng is easy
fooling your slef as to what yo should be
tango and dancing
the steps are the thinking
but the music has challace and cheers on thier way

trash and the heaps of it
scattered inside me
the in-dig-a-nation to inspire the fame
confidnce is weekness
and what is the measure
and chasing perfection when its perfectly sain

seek with a caution
get carried away
beutiful what nots the most desprate of things
balanced in chaos
intimite mieetings
closing the night and then opening the day

Liu Bolin: Artist

My friend Ryan turned me on to this cool Chinese artist that has made a name for himself with intriguing sculptures that incorporate human figures within common settings or objects. More predominantly and most intriguing to me is his Camouflage art where he paints himself as the setting he stands in front of creating this transparent looking effect. The image on the left is an example of this all natural no Photoshop used camouflage transparency art.

New keyboard

Very cool, I love simple changes in technology that make way for completly new ways of doing common tasks. Like this subtle change in keyboard interaction. This keyboard uses pressure to interpret keystorokes. This allows users to add more demension to your typing or game playing. For instance, if you are shouting in your text simply press each key harder…..Anywho, it’s pretty neat check out the video.

Todays Tech: Editorial

Being part of the industrial revolution must have been amazing. I use to wish I was around during a revolution of that size as I would have wanted to take risks and catch the business wave as early as I could. Like being around when Bill Gates started MicroSoft. How could people have thought it was a fad, or rejected such an practical, obvious, beneficial product? Computers and software changed the way life happens and a majority of the population were/are late adopters. These last few years have been the beginning of yet another great revolution in my eyes and I wasn’t going to pas it up. I cant believe how many thought/think the technologies of today are a fad, many of those nah sayers who argued in my and coworkers face and mocked the industries goals are forgotten (lucky for them) and from only 1 year ago! More and more are getting on the ride. Im glad I started giving it my all early on, no regrets.

We still have a long way to go. Those who said Facebook was a fad are now on FaceBook with the rest of their family and friends and use it fairly often. What’s more disturbing is how often I over hear people on FaceBook or in passing that scream how much Twitter is a useless fad……I guess we just need to give them a few years in which I suspect that they will be bashing yet another new technology, but will do it using Twitter.

Even the most basic and useful forums of social media get bashed to this day, often purely for cultural reasons in which technology in many peoples eyes equal sub par information and practicality. I don’t know how many times I’ve over heard intelligent people bashing any information found on Wikipedia. Although not perfect it’s easy to for get that Webster and Britannica were all originally missions of one man traveling the globe. One man one perspective asking strangers and alike what they knew to be knowledge of the earth and its inhabitants. Accuracy is subjective and in this case a multitude of subjective persons might be more powerful and “true” then a single man is the final say.

Let’s try harder to find use in things that catch on or connect us all, that increase our perspective across greater bounds whether it be 100% accurate or not. If we are brought together and information is shared more readily then we are only following a path set thousands of years before us first with smoke signals, then to written stone, bibles, printed news, telegraphs and phones, radio and TV, internet and social media. Let us allow ourselves to find the good, as we have so reluctant at each point of our past, in connecting with one another and decipher the positive gains in mediums that do just that.

iPhone, Safari, and HTML5, Oh My!

iPhone Safari is purpoted to be trying to release HTML5’s newest spec that allows video tags. This means that we will soon be able to watch video inline easily not only on the web in general but on our pretty little phones.

Some of you may be saying, “I already can playvideo on my phone”. Which although true isnt really the whole picture. Have you noticed that when there is video you must play in in a seperate quicktime panel that pops out. Witht the inclusion of this new spec you will be ale to just press play from within the web page.

For developers this also menas that including images in a pahge will be as easy as using a simple <video> tag as appose to needing to use a plugin like quicktime or flash. As Isaac put it, we are one step closer to getting rid of flash.

Example:

<video src=”http://www.ananova.com/about/vap_windows_check.wmv”>
your browser does not support the video tag
</video>