I was so amused by this, which tells more about me than about the commercial so watch for yourself!
Maybe a presidentiable could copy this. I’m hoping for Dick Gordon because they could have secondary results that could be very funny!!! Dick best presidentiable name ever!!!!!
Quote::The Happiness Project: Seth Godin: "You Can Become the Indispensable Linchpin."
Read the whole interview at the linked site!!
Gretchen:If you had to sum up in one sentence what you want a reader to understand from reading Linchpin, what would it be?
The world wants you to be a faceless, replaceable cog in the vast machinery of production–but if you choose, and you work at it, you can become the sort of person we really need, an indispensable linchpin, a person who matters. The marketplace needs and embraces artists, creatives, initiators, challengers and movers. You have that skill, the challenge is unearthing it.
via The Happiness Project: Seth Godin: “You Can Become the Indispensable Linchpin.”.
Advice::The Happiness Project: Seth Godin: "You Can Become the Indispensable Linchpin."
We really need to disabuse ourselves with the destructive notion that we just aren’t born creative. As Sir Ken Robinson likes to say “We grow out of creativity”. We fail often and go through stuff we don’t want to feel again, this makes us fear failure and when you are too afraid how our you going to be creative when in a lot of ways creativity is about being brave about something. I think a good rule of thumb for this is that if you are not afraid on failing about something then you are not trying hard enough. It’s cliche but we have to push the boundaries with everything we do. So Be Brave.
Gretchen: You write about the importance of thinking creatively. Do you have any habits or exercises that you follow to try to boost your creativity or to give yourself the breathing room need to think big?
Seth: There are two secrets to creativity:
1. Understand that there's no gene for it. No cultural or family history required. Creativity isn't a gift from above, it's something that everyone is capable of.
2. The only thing that prevents your creativity from showing up is fear. Fear of being laughed at, fear of being wrong, fear of seeming uninformed. So many creative exercises and habits revolve around overcoming that fear.
For me, the single best thing you can do to become more creative is to be wrong more often. Creative people are wrong all the time (look at Apple's long string of failures). The goal is to create a safe place to be wrong, a way to be wrong without destroying yourself. [Along these lines, I remind myself to Enjoy the fun of failure.] The more wrong I am, the more often, the better I seem to get at being creative.
There are very few chances a day to be really creative, even for someone who is creative for a living, the way I am. So I seek these moments out, I treasure them and I try to be intentional. “Here's something I've waited for a day or a week for… a chance to say or do something that might change the status quo, that might improve a system… I wonder how I can mess it up?”
via The Happiness Project: Seth Godin: “You Can Become the Indispensable Linchpin.”.
rePost::The Safety Net – Living on Nothing but Food Stamps – Series – NYTimes.com
With how much America spends on Wars and Aid it is appalling how the social safety net is looked down upon a large group of Americans. This recession needs to end now
“It’s the one thing I can count on every month — I know the children are going to have food,” Ms. Bermudez, 42, said with the forced good cheer she mastered selling rows of new stucco homes.
Members of this straitened group range from displaced strivers like Ms. Bermudez to weathered men who sleep in shelters and barter cigarettes. Some draw on savings or sporadic under-the-table jobs. Some move in with relatives. Some get noncash help, like subsidized apartments. While some go without cash incomes only briefly before securing jobs or aid, others rely on food stamps alone for many months.
The surge in this precarious way of life has been so swift that few policy makers have noticed. But it attests to the growing role of food stamps within the safety net. One in eight Americans now receives food stamps, including one in four children.
via The Safety Net – Living on Nothing but Food Stamps – Series – NYTimes.com.
Better Class Of Politicians Please::Villar defends anew poverty roots – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos
If you show no respect for the norms/procedures that ensure a workable government of checks and balances then why the heck do you want to govern one(government)? As we can see in the US Senate/Congress, an institution where people seem to no longer have delicadeza is an ungovernable group. If Villar cannot submit to a council of his peers in the senate he is showing a disrespect to half of the the institution which is charged with guarding against executive excess. We do not need another GMA. I think that if he just submits to his peers in the senate, not only will he appear as being ganged up on (we Filipinos love the underdog), he would also quite people like me who believes that personalities are trumped by the institutions in the long run. He needs to stand up and declare to the country and to his peers his innocence. If he is not confident in his skill to defend himself, How can we trust him to defend us, the Filipino People.
Gordon noted that there were candidates, who projected to be pro-poor in political ads only to get elected in office.
“You can see those who play cute with people, those who use advertising to say that they are poor and yet they are not when you see their record,” said Gordon in Filipino.
When booed by some people from the crowd, Gordon said, “Thank you very much, alam kong kasama kayo sa mga pumasok diyan [I know you were among those who went inside].”
He was apparently referring to supporters of Villar, who were in the crowd.
Gordon said the poor were being exploited but often forgotten once the candidates were elected in office.
“You have to face the fact, kung ang leader niyo hindi haharap sa accountability dapat hinds iboto [if your leader will not face his accountability, you should not vote for him],” Gordon added.
His last remark was also an apparent reference to Villar, who refused to face the Senate investigation into his alleged involvement in the road project controversy.
via Villar defends anew poverty roots – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.
Quote::Real Advice Hurts | 43 Folders
We can’t get good at something solely by reading about it. And we’ll never make giant leaps in any endeavor by treating it like a snack food that we munch on whenever we’re getting bored. You get good at something by doing it repeatedly. And by listening to specific criticism from people who are already good at what you do. And by a dedication to getting better, even when it’s inconvenient and may not involve a handy bulleted list.
via Real Advice Hurts | 43 Folders.
Best Read:: Something that really bugs me about the recent Star Trek movie: Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy
This has ruined the Star Wars reboot for me, read the whole thing if you dare. Damn didn’t think of that.
Damn reminds me of what a friend says about reboot Spock. Reboot Spock was an asshole counter to the original series spock where he was irritating not for being an asshole but for being sooo damn logical.
ty to Brad Delong for the pointer
Something that really bugs me about the recent Star Trek movie
Mitch Wagner
There’s a scene at the end of the movie—and I don’t think this is a spoiler, the movie has been building to this point the whole time—where Kirk has the bad guy on the main bridge viewscreen. The bad guy is defeated, his ship crippled, and Kirk offers amnesty. The bad guy proudly refuses, and instead dies with his ship.
Spock approaches Kirk afterward and asks if Kirk was really going to help the bad guy out. And Kirk smirks and says, no, of course not. Spock is happy about that.
It seems to me that one scene spits in the face of one of the greatest things about the original Trek. The show was primarily an action-adventure program, with plenty of fistfights and stirring ship-to-ship battle. But in the end, Gene Roddenberry and the rest of the people who created Trek were espousing a philosophy of peace and forgiveness. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise extended forgiveness to enemies many times, including the very first time they encountered the Romulans, in a sequence that the movie echoes.
The message of Trek: It’s better to talk than to fight. It’s better to forgive your enemies.
via Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Something that really bugs me about the recent Star Trek movie.
rePost::Seth's Blog: The relentless search for "tell me what to do"
This is sooo true nobody wants to make a decision. Make a decision and other people would criticize it or say that there is a better way. I think it’s easy to think of something better. I believe it’s esay to go one up when someone has already set the bar/base, the problem is that few people do, few people accept the responsibility of being wrong. My take? if it’s really important to you then stand up and get yourself heard other wise don’t let other people pass the buck to you. It’s easier finding someone to blame than facing that blame so do it only when you feel it is important to you!!!!
The relentless search for “tell me what to do”
If you’ve ever hired or managed or taught, you know the feeling.
People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: “If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I’m safe.”
When asked, resist.via Seth’s Blog: The relentless search for “tell me what to do”.
rePost::I Prefer My Professor’s Illegible Handwriting To Your PowerPoint Presentation
O feel the same way. Powerpoints are superflous and in most cases unecessary. If you are just going to read stuff to me or tell me things I can read in the book, then why are you wasting my time ? I can read the goddamn book. If you really want to not be useless then teach me. Quiz me and find out what’s the barriers from me understanding something. What do I find unconvincing.
The surprising part is not that he lectures without PowerPoint, because many professors also avoid presentation software. The surprising part is that I prefer his chalkboard notes over PowerPoint despite the fact that his handwriting is almost completely illegible, suggesting that there is a quality of “chalk talks” that is useful to my learning style beyond just being able to read the notes. I have some ideas why this might be:
via Carolyn Blogs » Blog Archive » I Prefer My Professor’s Illegible Handwriting To Your PowerPoint Presentation.
Research Of The Day (ROTD):The Only Reason I'd Love To Move Abroad:The Bellows » Paper of the Day the First
Yes, there is a part of me that wants to move abroad. It’s the part that believes Silicon Valley/New York/London is where the tech action is. Where I’d likely find people of like or at least similar aspirations. Take for instance the Philippine Tech Community. Its the same faces, and there is a reason for this, for keeping an 8 hour job and still coding/blogging/learning new programming languages/coding up personal projects is tiring and people who are either not rich/not very very smart/ very very productive/ very very lucky can do it. Life get’s in the way. I consider myself lucky , and this is the only reason why I am at least at the periphery or maybe the first row at the outside of the Philippine Tech Community, not quite there yet but slowly inching inwards. Sometimes it’s not about greener pastures. It’s what a musician and a dancer working in Hong Kong Disneyland says when interviewed by Kara Davin in last weeks episode of OFW Diaries, It’s the opportunity to practice something you love.
And I think that to a certain extent, people make these choices based on conceptions they have about themselves and the people they’d like to be. If you see yourself as someone who is interested in art, you may move to New York, not just because there is a lot of great art there, but also because you’ll meet people there who are themselves interested in art and who will nudge you toward more involvement with art and artists. Or you might move to Denver, because you want to be an outdoorsy person. People you meet there will typically be outdoorsy, and they’ll make it easier for you to become this outdoorsy person that you hope to be. At a more general level, people may simply feel that they’re “destined for bigger things”, or ready for a “simpler life”, and they may choose cities based on these feelings. Not just because they’re going where they want to go, but because they’re committing themselves to a certain lifestyle, and placing themselves in a situation where the people they come to know will act as constraints on them, pushing them to behave in a certain way. After all, you can love art in Denver and be outdoorsy in New York.
It seems to me that people want to be a lot of things that they can’t necessarily become on their own. A move can be a means to commit oneself to a certain course, and to make it harder to back away from a desired goal or style of life.
via The Bellows » Paper of the Day the First.