The Dalai Lama on Happiness

clipped from mail.google.com The problem isn’t materialism as such. Rather it is the underlying assumption that full satisfaction can arise from gratifying the senses alone. Unlike animals whose quest for happiness is restricted to survival and to the immediate gratification of sensory desires, we human beings have the capacity to experience happiness at a deeper level which, when achieved, can overwhelm unhappy experiences. -His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Piracy in Somalia

Piracy, one of the worlds’ oldest professions, is still alive and well in parts of the world, including Somalia.  Nearly three months ago, Somali pirates took as hostages the crew of a Danish cargo ship.  Ransom has been paid and the crew has finally been freed.  Thank goodness they are all safe and well.

I wish I were capable of hunting down pirates like this.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/08/23/somali.pirates.ap/index.html

Outward Bound, Looking In – Iraq/Afgan Vets & Outward Bound

Audio Slide Show: Journey in Colorado
A self-discovery course takes combat into the Colorado mountains to help heal emotional scars.

Blog Flux

Directory of Personal Blog at BlogFlux.com

Thought for the day

“He insulted me, he hurt me, he defeated me, he robbed me.”
Those who think such things will not be free from hate.
-Buddha

The same color illusion

 

The Same Color Illusion
Credit: Edward H. Adelson, Wikipedia

Explanation: Are square A and B the same color? They are. Are too. To verify this, click on the above image to see them connected. The above illusion, called the same color illusion, illustrates that purely human observations in science may be ambiguous or inaccurate. Even such a seemingly direct perception as relative color. Similar illusions exist on the sky, such as the size of the Moon near the horizon, or the apparent shapes of astronomical objects. The advent of automated, reproducible, measuring devices such as CCDs have made science in general and astronomy in particular less prone to, but not free of, human-biased illusions.

I am actually worth something!

$3915.00

That’s how much I’m worth dead, according to the Cadaver Calculator.

Blog rating

I’ll have to work on this. I can do better.  Honest to gosh!  I mean, gee whiz.

Do you REALLY need email?

This story makes you think. At one time I had six different email addresses; was I crazy? Yes. It was nearly impossible to keep track of them all. Even today I have four, although one of them was created by default at at my ISP, Comcast, and one was created at Yahoo, although I never use either one other than for an occasional test. My other two — one is my primary email accout and one I use for ham radio related “stuff”.

Do you REALLY need email??

No Email?????? ……….. An unemployed man is desperate to support his family of a wife and three kids. He applies for a janitor’s job at a large firm and easily passes an aptitude test.

The human resources manager tells him, “You will be hired at minimum wage of $5.35 an hour. Let me have your e-mail address so that we can get you in the loop. Our system will automatically e-mail you all the forms and advise you when to start and where to report on your first day.”

Taken back, the man protests that he is poor and has neither a Computer nor an e-mail address. To this the manager replies, “You must understand that to a company like ours that means that you virtually do not exist. Without an e-mail address you can hardly expect to be employed by a high-tech firm. Good day.”

Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having $10 in his wallet, he walks past a farmer’s market and sees a stand selling 25 lb. crates of beautiful red tomatoes. He buys a crate, carries it to a busy corner and displays the tomatoes. In less than 2 hours he sells all the tomatoes and makes 100% profit.

Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 and arrives home that night with several bags of groceries for his family. During the night he decides to repeat the tomato business the next day.

By the end of the week he is getting up early every day and working into the night. He multiplies his profits quickly.

Early in the second week he acquires a cart to transport several boxes of tomatoes at a time, but before a month is up he sells the cart to buy a broken-down pickup truck.

At the end of a year he owns three old trucks. His two sons have left their neighborhood gangs to help him with the tomato business, his wife is buying the tomatoes, and his daughter is taking night courses at the community college so she can keep books for him.

By the end of the second year he has a dozen very nice used trucks and employs fifteen previously unemployed people, all selling tomatoes. He continues to work hard.

Time passes and at the end of the fifth year he owns a fleet of nice trucks and a warehouse that his wife supervises, plus two tomato farms that the boys manage.

The tomato company’s payroll has put hundreds of homeless and jobless people to work. His daughter reports that the business grossed a million dollars.

Planning for the future, he decides to buy some life insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances. Then the adviser asks him for his e-mail address in order to send the final documents electronically.

When the man replies that he doesn’t have time to mess with a computer and has no e-mail address, the insurance man is stunned, “What, you don’t have e-mail? No computer! No Internet! Just think where you would be today if you’d had all of that five years ago!”

” Ha!” snorts the man. “If I’d had e-mail five years ago I would be sweeping floors at Microsoft and making $5.35 an hour.”

Author Unknown

annoying blogging habits

For some reason, I get aggravated when blog/email/IM/blah.blah.blah writers ignore certain standards.  For example, there used to be someone that would always WRITE IN ALL CAPS WHEN HE SENT ME EMAILS.  Pipe down dude, stop shouting.  then there are the people that don’t use any capitals at all, which i also find extremely annoying.  finally there are those idiots that dont use any caps or punctuation or anything else to make it easy to read what theyve written i mean how the hell are you supposed to understand what theyre saying it just doesnt make any sense

Maybe it’s just me.  Call me anal or something, but I feel that the “rules” of writing are there for a very good reason –  These same people wouldn’t even think of writing this way on paper, writing a letter say, or a report for work.  So why should email or instant messaging be any different?

I just don’t get it.