Synthetic happiness is the same as the real thing. Huge choices don’t make that big a difference. We’re usually going to say this was the right one anyway. If we have too many choices we’re going to blame our selves for not choosing the right one. Reminds me of Blink (The Power of Thinking with out Thinking).
Too many choices can result in stagnation. Just choose and be happy.
I wrote the following for a book I contributed to recently. Presenting these words to my parents was truly a gratifying experience. The following has also been appended to the About page. –My best.
John Erik Metcalf “Put yourself in their shoes.” “Do you understand why you shouldn’t do that?” “Remember the Golden Rule?” These are phrases that punctuated my upbringing. An only child, I grew up in the hill country north of San Antonio, Texas. I was homeschooled until eighth grade, when I chose to enroll in public school.
My parents, moderate conservatives, both work primarily from home – teaching me there was a natural fit. Their approach was similar to the Montessori Method. I’d focus on one subject as long as I wished, sometimes weeks, when I became uninterested I’d move to another. The computer, first a Tandy 1000, was incorporated into many of my lessons. I wasn’t allowed to play games much, so I’d recode them, then “test ‘em out.”
I recall running errands as a family; my father would proclaim “Let’s be Encouragers today.” Encouragers was a name conferred upon us by a neighbor years ago, it’s an exercise my parents have always taught: inspire others with confidence wherever you are. A practice I strive to carry on today.
The website for this movie/movement is full of facts, a timeline, and other interactive goodies (good job 1trickpony). I was happy to see Sony Pictures funding this film. About:
It was among the fastest, most efficient production cars ever built. It ran on electricity, produced no emissions and catapulted American technology to the forefront of the automotive industry. The lucky few who drove it never wanted to give it up. So why did General Motors crush its fleet of EV1 electric vehicles in the Arizona desert?
WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? chronicles the life and mysterious death of the GM EV1, examining its cultural and economic ripple effects and how they reverberated through the halls of government and big business.
Great documentary reccomended to me by David James. Watch the trailer. About the film:
Nobelity is a feature documentary, which looks at the world’s most pressing problems through the eyes of nine distinguished Nobel laureates. Filmed across the U.S. and Europe, in India and Africa, Nobelity follows Turk Pipkin’s personal journey in learning about these problems and what we can do about them. The true stars of the film are the children that Turk met along the way, for it is our kids and grandkids whose lives will be most affected by the decisions and actions of today.
The project:
One of our principal goals is to connect people all over the world with reliable information and innovative thinking on pressing global problems like global warming, the energy challenge, global health, economic disparity and development, cultural understanding, nuclear proliferation and general question of war and peace.
Though I cry at the sight of near altruism, I have never had a hero. I may never have one and that’s ok. However, as I have said before I would like to find a group who I aspire to be among the ranks of. I have begun looking for this group. In the meantime, I decided on an easy faction to checkout.
Not all outrageously rich people are alike. To inspire me, to make my list you have be worth something. What does that mean? Well, you have to use your money and/or power for the good of mankind. Yes, many normal people do this, but when you are a billionaire the need to do/be this is much greater, because your power is greater. In fact, I would say it goes both ways, if you are not making a difference you are even worse. Sorry, but to me that is something that goes along with being super rich, a celebrity, a president, a leader –
Guy Kawasaki’s, Rules for Revolutionaries is a great book.
The first section is titled “Create like a God” it is full of tips on how to think out side of the box. It includes examples like how universal studios took the business model of Disney world and flipped it upside-down. They offered rides that could break your wrists if you left your hands out, fire-balls that were too hot, etc. While Disney World, and current theme parks of the time, were sweet and genial. The point is to think differently. Say things the way they have never been said before. Think from the problem down. If you are annoyed with the process of paying for your meal at a restraint, it takes too long. Ask yourself what would make things better? Visualize from the top. I think it would be nice if the lady showed me my bill and I said yes or no and then the money was taken out of my bank instantly.
“Don’t worry, be crappy.” This is another great tip from Rules for Revolutionaries. The point of that statement is to say: get it out there, don’t worry if it is not perfect. If you are working on a project it is generally better to release it in beta when it works pretty well. This makes me think of Google. They always release their beta products; GMail in betaforever. By doing this they receive feedback from users, investors see progress, and engineers are happy to see their work has gone live. It’s the bootstrapper’s method.
Don’t hide your mistakes. The example in the book deals with Tom’s of Mane. A change in a deodorant’s ingredients caused half of their customer base to be unhappy with the product. As result, sales plummeted and Tom’s of Main found themselves in a slump. So they fixed the problem, shipped out a response and a free sample to every customer that had complained, and donated the faulty batch of deodorant to the homeless. Soon, sales were up, old and new customers were buying, and they were more loyal then ever.
Be an Evangelist. Someone told me recently that the first step of creation, whatever the concept, is “sharing your idea.” I thought “well, duh.” But it is more then just telling someone, “hey I got this cool idea for a new wireless phone that uses VoIP.” You create a buzz, you play the evangelist. If people believe in your product/service/whatever then they will create with you, for you.
To change the world involves risk. Take it. Step out on that limb that’s never been tested, yell out and make the people below notice you. Turn their skeptical glances to attentive stares, gain their support, and sell them your creation.
This is the type of work that makes this computer/information-lover inspired:
Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling”. When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the “feeling” expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved.
The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s? What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine’s Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest? And so on. [...]
- Jonathan Harris & Sepandar Kamvar
May 2006
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