Actually, this blog is splitting up.

Elsewhere in Dreams

EID will be my poetry and artistic endeavours spot, if you will. Pooh had one, why can’t I?

Okay, Whatever.

OKWE is for everything else, like rants about things you don’t care about, much.

This blog (the one you’re reading now) is winding down. Twitter imports have stopped, Google Reader Shared Items imports have stopped, and no posting will be happening. However, the content will remain (Geof willing) as long as it can. I’m not forwarding the blog either, as that would just be to gosh darn hard.

• 3D printing consumables for dead technology

  Shared by DanielDeboer
  
  3D printers are so, so freaking cool.

  

  The Sharp CE-150 was a graphing calculator that used a pen-plotter to draw its charts. The pens haven’t been manufactured in years, so Thingiverse user TeamTeamUSA is creating a 3D printable adapter that will accept modern pen cartridges:

  Re-live the bygone years of RPN, 16 Kb total RAM, cassette tape storage, and plotted printing!

  A friend is a vintage computer junkie and one of his recent purchases was a printer/plotter for his Sharp PC-1500A pocket computer.

  Although the printer works, the pens, being almost 30 years old, do not nor are they still available.

  This is an attempt to help him re-live the geeky years of his youth!

  Sharp CE-150 Printer Pen Adapter by TeamTeamUSA

  
  

• You’ve Got To Be Kitten, Part 2

  (Vet | Seattle, WA, USA)

  Me: “Thank you for calling [vet hospital]. How can I help you?”

  Customer: “I found some kittens. I am trying to get them to eat. They are small and I don’t think they should be away from their mom.”

  Me: “Okay. Are you able to get some milk replacer from the store?”

  Customer: “Well, I bought some kitten food. They won’t eat it. I am trying to get my cat to nurse them.”

  Me: “Is your cat the mother of the kittens?”

  Customer: “No, but I am trying to get him to nurse them. How can I do that?”

  Me: “Him? Your cat is a male?”

  Customer: “Yes, but I thought cats would adopt kittens and raise them.”

  Me: “You want your male cat to nurse the kittens?”

  Customer: “Yes.”

  Me: “Here is the phone number for the local cat foster program. They will be happy to raise the kittens for you.”

  Related:
  You’ve Got To Be Kitten

• Ten Reasons Why I Would Never Donate to a Major Charity (How to Be a Superhero, Part 2)
  Photo: Katherine Johnson

  This is a cross-post from James Altucher‘s blog Altucher Confidential. His previous appearances on the Freakonomics blog can be found here.

  “Giving to Charity” is another myth we fervently uphold as part of the Great American Religion — just like “own a home” or “send your kids to college.” It’s time we stop blindly believing in mythology. I’m not saying don’t give. I’m not saying don’t be spiritual or don’t be good. But do it with thoughtfulness, with true spirit, with a true desire to help. More harm than good is done when you blindly throw money at most charities.

  When the first version of this article came out (“How to Be a Superhero…or Why I Would Never Donate to a Major Charity”), I got a lot of criticism. So I’m going to answer some of the criticisms/questions that arose and I look forward to any comments or further suggestions.

  1)   Be a Microcharity, part 2. First off, my recommendation in the first article still holds. What I like to do is directly donate to what I call “micro-causes.” Specifically, pick up the local paper and see who needs help right now, where a small amount of money can immediately make a significant difference in someone’s life.

  In other words, be directly, personally involved with your cause. Then you know how the dollars are being used, you know face to face who is being helped, you feel good, you solve an immediate problem, you save a life. You go from being an average guy to a superhero. Please check out the above article, as I describe the best ways to do this. For the next nine reasons I give specifics as to why I avoid the major charities.

  2)  I already donate to thousands of major charities. When you pay taxes, a good portion of the U.S. budget goes toward funding philanthropic causes. I have no control over that money. Nor is that money always correctly allocated. So much corruption (not in our government but in others) has siphoned off that money. Nor do I always approve of the charities being donated to but I have no choice over it. And that’s fine. I can use No. 1 above to balance that off. I do have to say, though, that some of those charities the government has funded have worked. We eradicated smallpox throughout the world for instance. I feel pretty good about that. So if I can use my dollars to make more money for myself, and then pay more taxes, I don’t think it’s such a bad thing.

   

  

  While cancer rates are rising, it's harder than ever to get drugs through the FDA

  3)  I don’t like paying administrative overhead. For every $1 someone donates to the American Cancer Society, 9.8 cents goes to administrative costs. I’m happy that people have jobs and are hired and I have nothing against those that work for the ACS. But I bet if I used that money to start my own company (or, again, directly help people through my own micro-charity), then more people would have jobs as a result, and more people would get their problems solved. And the ACS is probably one of the best-run major charities out there.

  4) I don’t like paying marketing costs. I didn’t realize this until I looked it up. But for every dollar I give to the American Cancer Society, 21.8 cents goes toward furthering their marketing efforts. I thought I just gave them money. Now they need more money already? So only 70 cents of my dollar goes to actually helping the families with cancer.

  5) There are better ways to cure cancer. First off, it seems like I’m picking on the American Cancer Society. But this is the No. 1 killer in the U.S. so I might as well focus on it a little bit. And it’s not just cancer. What I’m about to say applies to Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and every other major disease. Companies cure cancer. Scientists with new ideas for drugs team up with businessmen, start little companies, get approximately $200 million to $1 billion in funding, then develop their drugs, put them through a bunch of different phrases through the FDA, and then finally if the drugs are good, they get bought by a bigger company that’s better at selling the drug.

  That’s how cancer gets cured. That’s how every disease in the world finds a cure now. So if you really want to help cure a major disease, put money into a biotech mutual fund, which funds small biotech companies. These companies are at the frontier of major biotech research. The other thing is to lobby the government to reduce the FDA’s stringent standards on drugs. A drug costs up to $200 million or more to get through the FDA. The only way companies can recoup that cost is by charging enormous amounts for drugs. This is part of the reason why health care and insurance are so expensive. Drugs for prostate cancer, for instance, cost up to $93,000 a month because of the billion or so it cost to get through the FDA.

  6) It’s hard to uncover charity fraud. The recent 60 Minutes expose on Greg Mortenson’s charity for building schools in Afghanistan is a good example. I don’t know if this is a fraud or not. We may never know the full story. I don’t want to know. But if it takes 60 Minutes to uncover something, using the best reporters out there, then how am I going to possibly be able to find out what’s fraud and what’s not.

  7) Charities are businesses. Businesses have agendas. The agenda of a charity is to convince you of a cause so that you feel concerned enough about it to donate. Example: there are many charities that try to do something about global warming. However, there is a lot of mixed evidence of global warming. If people stopped donating to these charities, even if all the evidence suggests that their cause is meaningless, a lot of jobs would be lost. A lot of lives (the families of the people holding those jobs) would be hurt. That’s sad. But it’s not your responsibility to help them. Many charities have causes that are unclear at best. So best to avoid them.

  High unemployment. With every dollar that I don’t save, I have two choices: donate it to a charity or spend it. A charity is obligated to spend only a very small amount per year on actual charitable activity. The rest goes into funds that generate interest. They spend off of the interest. When I spend a dollar in the economy, it instantly has its effect on jobs, growth, etc, particularly because of the “multiplier effect” (e.g. I buy a sandwich in a deli, the deli guy uses the dollar to buy a chair, the chair guy buys some books, the books guy buys a house, etc.). So each dollar spent is the equivalent of $10 spent on the economy. That has an immediate effect on the quality of our lives: lower unemployment, greater demand for products, homes etc.

  9) Smart allocators of capital are on the case. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are a 1,000 times better than I am at researching charitable cases, allocating their capital, investing correctly the leftover funds, etc. My $100 (or $1,000, or $10,000) is not going to make a dent compared to their $100 billion. Let them handle the big problems. With the micro-charity idea, I can personally make a great difference to people who Bill Gates will never even hear about.

  10) Give in every way you can possibly give. Spend your time and efforts on proper giving. Too often, giving to charities is a way to pass on the personal giving responsibility to someone else. “I gave at the office.” In addition to No. 1, please check out my post “Give and You Will Receive.”  It’s one of my first posts here and I truly believe and try to live by it. Giving of ourselves is the most important thing we can do in our lives, and the more you give, the more benefits you will receive. So don’t give simply to receive those benefits; give and then enjoy the benefits that will shower down. But the more personal the giving is, the greater the benefit.

• Why Bathing Was Uncommon in Medieval Europe

  Today I found out that why bathing was uncommon in Medieval Europe.

  Before the Middle Ages, public baths were very common, as was the general public regularly taking time to bathe in one way or another. Even during the 4^th and 5^th centuries, Christian authorities allowed people to bathe for cleanliness and health, but condemned attendance to public bath houses for pleasure and condemned women going to bath houses that had mixed facilities. However, over time, more and more restrictions appeared. Eventually, Christians were prohibited from bathing naked and, overall, the church began to not approve an “excessive” indulgence in the habit of bathing. This culminated in the Medieval church authorities proclaiming that public bathing led to immorality, promiscuous sex, and diseases.

  This latter “disease” point was very common; it was believed in many parts of Europe that water could carry disease into the body through the pores in the skin. According to one medical treaty of the 16th century, “Water baths warm the body, but weaken the organism and widen pores.  That’s why they can be dangerous and cause different diseases, even death.”  It wasn’t just diseases from the water itslef they were worried about.  They also felt that with the pores widened after a bath, this resulted in infections of the air having easier access to the body. Hence, bathing became connected with spread of diseases, not just immorality.

  For most lower class citizens, particularly men, this resulted in them completley forgoing bathing.  During this time, people tended to restrict their hygienic arrangements to just washing hands, parts of the face, and rinsing their mouths. Washing one’s entire face was thought to be dangerous as it was believed to cause catarrh and weaken the eyesight, so even this was infrequent.

  Members of the upper classes, on the other hand, rather than completley forgo bathing, tended to cut down their full body bathing habits down to around a few times per year, striking a balance between risk of acquiring a disease from the bath vs. body stench.

  This wasn’t always the case though.  As one Russian ambassador to France noted “His Majesty [Louis XIV] stunk like a wild animal.”  Russians were not so finicky about bathing and tended to bathe fairly regularly, relatively speaking, generally at least once a month.  Because of this, they were considered perverts by many Europeans.  King Louis XIV stench came from the fact that his physicians advised him to bathe as infrequently as possible to maintain good health.  He also stated he found the the act of bathing disturbing.  Because of this, he is said to have only bathed twice in his lifetime.  Another in this “gruesome two-some” class among the aristocracy was Queen Isabel I of Spain who once confessed that she had taken a bath only twice in her lifetime, when she was first born and when she got married.

  To get around the water/disease and sinful nature of bathing, many aristocrats during the Middle Ages replaced bathing with scented rags to rub the body and heavy use of perfumes to mask their stench. Men wore small bags with fragrant herbs between the shirt and waistcoat, while women used fragrant powders.

  Amazingly, this complete lack of personal hygiene in most of Europe lingered until around the mid-19th century.

  Bonus Factoids:

  • If most of the entire populace smelling rancid wasn’t enough, during Medieval times in Europe, the streets of cities tended to be coated in feces and urine thanks to people tossing the contents of their chamber pots into the streets.  As one 16th century nobleman noted “the streets resembled a fetid stream of turbid water.”  He also noted that he had to keep a scented handkerchief held under his nose in order to keep himself from vomiting when walking the streets.  If that wasn’t enough, butchers slaughtered animals in the streets and would leave the unusable bits and blood right on the ground. One can only imagine how people survived the stench on sun-baked summer days.
  • Interestingly, during the Middle Ages, people surprisingly did pay some attention to dental hygiene. Teeth were cleaned by rubbing them with a cloth and mixtures of herbs including the ashes of burnt rosemary.
  • The Ancient Greeks adopted the idea of bathing from the Hindus who were familiar with the benefits of bathing as early as 3,000 years ago.

  Sources:

  • A Short History of Bathing before 1601
  • The stench of medieval Europe still echoes today
  • Bathing during the Middle Ages
  • The Lifestyle of Medieval Peasants
  • Medieval medicine
  • The Last Years of Medieval Europe
  • Middle Ages Hygiene
  • History of Perfume

  *photo by Dr. Hemmert on flickr

• Was World War II good for the American economy?

  Put aside Bob Higgs’s points about restricted consumption, Alexander Field has another angle:

  Had trends persisted in the absence of war, employment, TFP, and labor productivity would all likely have been higher in 1942…housing construction was robust and growing in 1939, 1940, and 1941, and when the postwar housing boom emerged with full force in 1946, it took off from where it had been arrested in 1941. Since the failure of residential construction to revive fully was one of the major contributors to the persistence of low private investment spending during the Depression, its signs of revival in the years immediately preceding the war suggest that had peace continued, investment, output, and employment growth would have continued as the economy reapproached capacity.

  …There continues to be a popular perception that war is beneficial to an economy, particularly if it does not lead to much physical damaged to the country prosecuting it.  The U.S. experience during the Second World War is the typical poster child for this point of view.  Detailed research into the effects of armed conflict, however, has usually produced more nuanced interpretations…In that spirit, the research reported in this chapter represents a revisionist approach to the analysis of the Second World War, although one that is not entirely unanticipated.

  You can buy Field’s excellent book here and here is my previous post on the work.  Here is Kling on Field, very useful.

  

• He Won

  In The Looming Tower, the Pulitzer-winning history of al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11, author Lawrence Wright lays out how Osama bin Laden’s motivation for the attacks that he planned in the 1990s, and then the September 11 attacks, was to draw the U.S. and the West into a prolonged war—an actual war in Afghanistan, and a broader global war with Islam.

  Osama got both. And we gave him a prolonged war in Iraq to boot. By the end of Obama’s first term, we’ll probably top 6,000 dead U.S. troops in those two wars, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans. The cost for both wars is also now well over $1 trillion.

  We have also fundamentally altered who we are. A partial, off-the-top-of-my-head list of how we’ve changed since September 11 . . .

  • We’ve sent terrorist suspects to “black sites” to be detained without trial and tortured.
  • We’ve turned terrorist suspects over to other regimes, knowing that they’d be tortured.
  • In those cases when our government later learned it got the wrong guy, federal officials not only refused to apologize or compensate him, they went to court to argue he should be barred from using our courts to seek justice, and that the details of his abduction, torture, and detainment should be kept secret.
  • We’ve abducted and imprisoned dozens, perhaps hundreds of men in Guantanamo who turned out to have been innocent. Again, the government felt no obligation to do right by them.
  • The government launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign implying that people who smoke marijuana are complicit in the murder of nearly 3,000 of their fellow citizens.
  • The government illegally spied and eavesdropped on thousands of American citizens.
  • Presidents from both of the two major political parties have claimed the power to detain suspected terrorists and hold them indefinitely without trial, based solely on the president’s designation of them as an “enemy combatant,” essentially making the president prosecutor, judge, and jury. (I’d also argue that the treatment of someone like Bradley Manning wouldn’t have been tolerated before September 11.)
  • The current president has also claimed the power to execute U.S. citizens, off the battlefield, without a trial, and to prevent anyone from knowing about it after the fact.
  • The Congress approved, the president signed, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a broadly written law making it a crime to advocate for any organization the government deems sympathetic to terrorism. This includes challenging the “terrorist” designation in the first place.
  • Flying in America now means enduring a humiliating and hassling ritual that does little if anything to actually make flying any safer. Every time the government fails to catch an attempt at terrorism, it punishes the public for its failure by adding to the ritual.
  • American Muslims, a heartening story of success and assimilation, are now harassed and denigrated for merely trying to build houses of worship.
  • Without a warrant, the government can search and seize indefinitely the laptops and other personal electronic devices of anyone entering the country.
  • The Department of Homeland Security now gives terrorism-fighting grants for local police departments across the country to purchase military equipment, such as armored personnel carriers, which is then used against U.S. citizens, mostly to serve drug warrants.

  I’m relieved that bin Laden is dead. And the Navy SEALs who carried out the harrowing raid that ended his life have my respect and admiration. And for all the massive waste and abuse our government has perpetrated in the name of fighting terrorism over the last decade, there’s something satisfying in knowing that he was killed in a limited, targeted operation based on specific intelligence.

  But because of the actions of one guy, we allowed all the bullet points above to happen. That we managed to kill him a decade after the September 11 attacks is symbolically important, but hardly seems worth the celebrations we saw across the country last night. There was something unsettling about watching giddy crowds bounce around beach balls and climb telephone polls last night, as if they were in the lawn seats at a rock festival. Solemn and somber appreciation that an evil man is gone seemed like the more appropriate reaction.

  Yes, bin Laden the man is dead. But he achieved all he set out to achieve, and a hell of a lot more. He forever changed who we are as a country, and for the worse. Mostly because we let him. That isn’t something a special ops team can fix.

  
• Macro of the Day

  

  Macro of the Day: This should have been his official statement.

  [@tanehisi.]

  Tagged: Macro, osama bin laden

  

  

• Thermochromic Urinal Makes Peeing Fun

  Alright, cat’s out of the bag. The truth is we’ve always enjoyed drawing stuff with pee. A gross use of body fluid, yes, but creativity has no bounds. Such a mindset likely produced the Thermochromic Urinal pictured below. There’s scant detail about who made it or where it’s used. Judging by the photographic evidence, however, it does take a fresh approach to the concept of a urinal.

  (…)
  Read the rest of Thermochromic Urinal Makes Peeing Fun

  ---

  © Geeky Gadgets, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
  Post tags: Humor
  

• President Simba

  [At last night's White House Correspondents' Dinner, President Barack] Obama … mauled the media, especially Fox News, suggesting some news organizations maybe attaching undue importance to the ‘birther’ issue. The president said if his original birth certificate issued by Hawaii was not enough to convince everyone, he was issuing a birth video.
  He then showed a clip from the animation movie Lion King. And then came the punch line. When the footage was shown, he said: “I want to make it clear to the Fox News table: That was a joke. That was not my birth video. That was a children’s cartoon.”

  The whole thing is actually worth watching. Source.

  

• You have more than one machine, don't you? So… run them on another machine. #
• I how I HATE the Scottish accent. It sounds like their mouths are struggling against the words… and losing. #
• Audio: http://tumblr.com/xho29kbpml #
• I heard an interview with Anton Kuerti on @cbcradio the other day. Which reminded me, I spend a week playing on one of his grand pianos. #
• Who excited for COFFEE! #
• Lifehacker's design is AWFUL. It never takes me to the article, always to the main page. So yeah, I need a replacement for that. #
• Dear All Windows Software Distributors, Could we get a 64 bit build please? Thanks. #
• Well now, if that's not a wordpress install, I don't know what is. #
• Finishing up the most annoying and longest quote known to mankind. #
• It turns out that every nonfiction book I really really like thanks Nassim Taleb somewhere in the acknowledgments. #
• Apparently a hockey game was played last night and it was pretty exciting. #
• A wild @sechastain appears! RMFO women use message board anger. It's not very effective. #
• I'm glad Ontario doesn't have many of them tornadoes. #
• "Even when films are fantastical, the fantasy is presented, as it were, naturalistically—in denial of its own artifice." #quotes #
• jwdb: http://tumblr.com/xho2aesf3x #
• No respect. #
• So this birth certificate? It's a 'shop. I can tell from the pixels and having seen a lot of photoshops in my time. #
• Sometimes I write the words and figure out my opinions as I go. I wonder if everyone is like this. #
• "Loading tweets seems to be taking a while". Yes, this has been my experience on Twitter thus far. What of it? #
• Dear Anybody Who Designs Brutalist Architecture, Please stop. Your statement has been made. You like squares. Done. Love, Everyone else #
• HTTrack is a great program. #
• Remember when they had "channels". It was, like, the middle ages. #
• Drupal is… difficult. #
• Everybody's a jackass on Twitter. #
• "Hayek wins the fight, Keynes gets the press. Sounds about right to me." #quotes #
• "Still screwing him is not the optimal way to stop screwing him." #quotes #qft #
• Every time I go into the office to get that network drive fixed… I get interrupted. Third day of not having it fixed. #
• Theology and love are not two separate things, simpleton. #
• Bunch of prissy twats having a to-do. With world new coverage. Pathetic. #
• I'm glad there's a site like OpenMedia.ca in Canada. #
• As of May 10, Google Apps is capping free users for new account at 10 accounts. Looks like someone needs to make some money! #
• Photo: http://tumblr.com/xho2beh1y8 #
• My brother just asked me how to mail something. Because he's never done this. What. #
• That doesn't look right at all. Stupid keys. #
• Bing+Yahoo today is where Yahoo was 3 years ago. This is absolutely mind-blowing. Outside of the US, that share starts to approach zero. #
• I don't know where all the positivity about Windows 7 comes from. It's… okay. Nothing special. #
• Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, your only crown. #
• I was watching Derrick Comedy before Donald Glover got all popular with Community and 30 Rock. You've probably never heard of them. #
• Photo: http://tumblr.com/xho2bivbmc #
• Photo: http://tumblr.com/xho2bkwyej #
• When talking to conservatives, I like to agree that abortion "much like capital punishment" is evil, then sit back and watch what happens. #
• I am right now doing a dubstep cover of "Ah, Holy Jesus, How Has Thou Offended". Johann Heermann may be turning in his grave. #
• I'm voting for the NDP! Because I like underdogs, and they have a well-thought-out technology platform. Which is all that matters, really. #
• Because the Bible, somewhere I'm sure, says that government should be small. #
• Question, everyone: Give me an example of a democratic socialist state that actively oppresses Christianity, present or past. #
• There are no small government states. There never have been. It's a dream some people in the US have. #
• I'm really enjoying The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. A bit random… but so am I. #
• Small government must be like safe sex, then. What you actually mean is "smaller government". I can get on that train, sometimes. #
• Twicca is pretty much awesome. #

• 38 Life Lessons I’ve Learned in 38 Years

  Post written by Leo Babauta.

  Today I turn 38 years old.

  I’ve been on this earth for nearly four decades. Being in a city like Paris, where there are buildings that measure their age by the millennia, helps put that brief blink of the eye into perspective. But still, it amazes me that I’ve been around that long — I feel like I’ve barely begun.

  I’m not usually one to make a big deal about my birthday, but as always, it has given me an opportunity to reflect. I thought I’d share a handful of lessons I’ve learned — as a helpful guide for those just starting out.

  This post is for my children, whom I miss greatly across the distance of a continent and an ocean. I hope this will shine a dim light on the streets they have to navigate ahead of them, though I know they’ll still stumble as much as I have.

  This is for you, Chloe, Justin, Rain, Maia, Seth and Noelle. I apologize for the length.
  

  38 Lessons I’ve Learned in My 38 Years

  1. Always swallow your pride to say you’re sorry. Being too proud to apologize is never worth it — your relationship suffers for no good benefit.

  2. Possessions are worse than worthless — they’re harmful. They add no value to your life, and cost you everything. Not just the money required to buy them, but the time and money spent shopping for them, maintaining them, worrying about them, insuring them, fixing them, etc.

  3. Slow down. Rushing is rarely worth it. Life is better enjoyed at a leisurely pace.

  4. Goals aren’t as important as we think. Try working without them for a week. Turns out, you can do amazing things without goals. And you don’t have to manage them, cutting out on some of the bureaucracy of your life. You’re less stressed without goals, and you’re freer to choose paths you couldn’t have foreseen without them.

  5. The moment is all there is. All our worries and plans about the future, all our replaying of things that happened in the past — it’s all in our heads, and it just distracts us from fully living right now. Let go of all that, and just focus on what you’re doing, right at this moment. In this way, any activity can be meditation.

  6. When your child asks for your attention, always grant it. Give your child your full attention, and instead of being annoyed at the interruption, be grateful for the reminder to spend time with someone you love.

  7. Don’t go into debt. That includes credit card debt, student debt, home debt, personal loans, auto loans. We think they’re necessary but they’re not, at all. They cause more headaches than they’re worth, they can ruin lives, and they cost us way more than we get. Spend less than you earn, go without until you have the money.

  8. I’m not cool, and I’m cool with that. I wasted a lot of energy when I was younger worrying about being cool. It’s way more fun to forget about that, and just be yourself.

  9. The only kind of marketing you need is an amazing product. If it’s good, people will spread the word for you. All other kind of marketing is disingenuous.

  10. Never send an email or message that’s unfit for the eyes of the world. In this digital age, you never know what might slip into public view.

  11. You can’t motivate people. The best you can hope for is to inspire them with your actions. People who think they can use behavioral “science” or management techniques have not spent enough time on the receiving end of either.

  12. If you find yourself swimming with all the other fish, go the other way. They don’t know where they’re going either.

  13. You will miss a ton, but that’s OK. We’re so caught up in trying to do everything, experience all the essential things, not miss out on anything important … that we forget the simple fact that we cannot experience everything. That physical reality dictates we’ll miss most things. We can’t read all the good books, watch all the good films, go to all the best cities in the world, try all the best restaurants, meet all the great people. But the secret is: life is better when we don’t try to do everything. Learn to enjoy the slice of life you experience, and life turns out to be wonderful.

  14. Mistakes are the best way to learn. Don’t be afraid to make them. Try not to repeat the same ones too often.

  15. Failures are the stepping stones to success. Without failure, we’ll never learn how to succeed. So try to fail, instead of trying to avoid failure through fear.

  16. Being a vegan/vegetarian is wonderful. For many years I thought it was a ridiculous notion, that I couldn’t give up meat, that it was a sacrifice not worth suffering through. I now know that it’s no sacrifice, that our taste buds easily change, that I’m enjoying vegan dishes more than anything I’ve ever eaten before, and I’m reducing the suffering of animals in the meantime.

  17. There are few joys that equal a good book, a good walk, a good hug, or a good friend. All are free.

  18. Fitness doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long process, a learning process, something that happens in little bits over a long period. I’ve been getting fit for five years now, and I still have more to learn and do. But the progress I’ve made has been amazing, and it’s been a great journey.

  19. The destination is just a tiny slice of the journey. We’re so worried about goals, about our future, that we miss all the great things along the way. If you’re fixated on the goal, on the end, you won’t enjoy it when you get there. You’ll be worried about the next goal, the next destination.

  20. A good walk cures most problems. Want to lose weight and get fit? Walk. Want to enjoy life but spend less? Walk. Want to cure stress and clear your head? Walk. Want to meditate and live in the moment? Walk. Having trouble with a life or work problem? Walk, and your head gets clear.

  21. Let go of expectations. When you have expectations of something — a person, an experience, a vacation, a job, a book — you put it in a predetermined box that has little to do with reality. You set up an idealized version of the thing (or person) and then try to fit the reality into this ideal, and are often disappointed. Instead, try to experience reality as it is, appreciate it for what it is, and be happy that it is.

  22. Giving is so much better than getting. Give with no expectation of getting something in return, and it becomes a purer, more beautiful act. To often we give something and expect to get an equal measure in return — at least get some gratitude or recognition for our efforts. Try to let go of that need, and just give.

  23. Competition is very rarely as useful as cooperation. Our society is geared toward competition — rip each other’s throats out, survival of the fittest, yada yada. But humans are meant to work together for the survival of the tribe, and cooperation pools our resources and allows everyone to contribute what they can. It requires a whole other set of people skills to work cooperatively, but it’s well worth the effort.

  24. Gratitude is one of the best ways to find contentment. We are often discontent in our lives, desire more, because we don’t realize how much we have. Instead of focusing on what you don’t have, be grateful for the amazing gifts you’ve been given: of loved ones and simple pleasures, of health and sight and the gift of music and books, of nature and beauty and the ability to create, and everything in between. Be grateful every day.

  25. Compassion for other living things is more important than pleasure. Many people scoff at vegetarianism because they love the taste of meat and cheese too much, but they are putting the pleasure of their taste buds ahead of the suffering of other living, feeling beings. You can be perfectly healthy on a vegetarian (even vegan) diet, so killing and torturing animals is absolutely unnecessary. Compassion is a much more fulfilling way to live than closing your eyes to suffering.

  26. Taste buds change. I thought I could never give up meat, but by doing it slowly, I never missed it. I thought I could never give up junk food like sweets, fried crap, nachos, all kinds of unhealthy things … and yet today I would rather eat some fresh berries or raw nuts. Weird, but it’s amazing how much our taste buds can change.

  27. Create. The world is full of distractions, but very few are as important as creating. In my job as a writer, there is nothing that comes close to being as crucial as creating. In my life, creating is one of the few things that has given me meaning. When it’s time to work, clear away all else and create.

  28. Get some perspective. Usually when we’re worried or upset, it’s because we’ve lost perspective. In the larger picture, this one problem means almost nothing. This fight we’re having with someone else — it’s over something that matters naught. Let it go, and move on.

  29. Don’t sit too much. It kills you. Move, dance, run, play.

  30. Use the magic of compound interest. Invest early, and it will grow as if by alchemy. Live on little, don’t get into debt, save all you can, and invest it in mutual funds. Watch your money grow.

  31. All we are taught in schools, and all we see in the media (news, films, books, magazines, Internet) has a worldview that we’re meant to conform to. Figure out what that worldview is, and question it. Ask if there are alternatives, and investigate. Hint: the corporations exert influence over all of our information sources. Another hint: read Chomsky.

  32. Learn the art of empathy. Too often we judge people on too little information. We must try to understand what they do instead, put ourselves in their shoes, start with the assumption that what others do has a good reason if we understand what they’re going through. Life becomes much better if you learn this art.

  33. Do less. Most people try to do too much. They fill life with checklists, and try to crank out tasks as if they were widget machines. Throw out the checklists and just figure out what’s important. Stop being a machine and focus on what you love. Do it lovingly.

  34. No one knows what they’re doing as parents. We’re all faking it, and hoping we’re getting it right. Some people obsess about the details, and miss out on the fun. I just try not to mess them up too much, to show them they’re loved, to enjoy the moments I can with them, to show them life is fun, and stay out of the way of them becoming the amazing people they’re going to become. That they already are.

  35. Love comes in many flavors. I love my children, completely and more than I can ever fully understand. I love them each in a different way, and know that each is perfect in his or her own way.

  36. Life is exceedingly brief. You might feel like there’s a huge mass of time ahead of you, but it passes much faster than you think. Your kids grow up so fast you get whiplash. You get gray hairs before your done getting your bearings on life. Appreciate every damn moment.

  37. Fear will try to stop you. Doubts will try to stop you. You’ll shy away from doing great things, from going on new adventures, from creating something new and putting it out in the world, because of self-doubt and fear. It will happen in the recesses of your mind, where you don’t even know it’s happening. Become aware of these doubts and fears. Shine some light on them. Beat them with a thousand tiny cuts. Do it anyway, because they are wrong.

  38. I have a lot left to learn. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that I know almost nothing, and that I’m often wrong about what I think I know. Life has many lessons left to teach me, and I’m looking forward to them all.

  —
  tweet love

  —
  Read about creating and un-procrastination
  in Leo’s books, Un-Procrastination and focus.

  

• Super Mario (Converse) All-Stars coming to Japan
  
  In honor of the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., Nintendo released a retread of Super Mario All-Stars. Now, working with Nintendo, Converse is releasing some Mario-themed goods to aid in your treading.

  This July, Converse will offer special edition Chuck Taylor All-Star shoes in two styles, with tiled Mario sprites against either a white or black canvas. Even the star on the All-Star logo gets a Mario makeover. Unfortunately, these kicks have only been announced for Japan, so it may be difficult for you to look this cool.

  Super Mario (Converse) All-Stars coming to Japan originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 29 Apr 2011 19:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

  Permalink | Email this | Comments

• Photo
  

• Police medic wields magic wellness stick
  
  “Primum non nocere.” Unless you have a cool-looking baton and you just can’t help yourself.

  
  

• Can We Please Stop Pretending That Microsoft's Bing Is Doing Well?

  Shared by Frank
  
  It means that for every $1 Microsoft generates from each new search query it buys, it spends $3 to get it.

  I have thought for a while that it is time for steve to go

  

  Over the past month or so, there has been a lot of enthusiasm about how much market share Microsoft’s Bing search engine is gaining.

  One writer even went so far as to suggest that Bing will pass Google in market share next year.

  The implication of these reports is that Bing is doing surprisingly well. If the writers actually believe that, we’d love some of whatever they’re smoking.

  As even a quick glimpse under the hood reveals, Bing not doing well. It’s doing horribly.

  Worse, Bing is burning attention and money that Microsoft needs to focus on a much more important battleground, one that–unlike search–could eventually destroy Microsoft’s core business.

  We’ll come back to the latter point. But for now, here’s the truth about Bing.

  THE TRUTH ABOUT BING

  Microsoft’s Bing search engine is indeed gaining some share of search queries in the US market (globally, Bing is nowhere). But it is gaining this share at an absolutely mind-boggling cost. Specifically, Microsoft is gaining share for Bing by doing spectacularly expensive distribution deals, deals that don’t even come close to paying for themselves in additional revenue.

  How much is Microsoft spending to buy market share for Bing?

  Based on an analysis of Microsoft’s financial statements, Bing is paying about 3X as much for every incremental search query as it generates in revenue from that query.

  What does that mean?

  It means that for every $1 Microsoft generates from each new search query it buys, it spends $3 to get it.

  (And that’s just direct costs–the costs of obtaining and processing the query. It doesn’t include sales and marketing, research and development, and general and administrative costs–all of which are subtracted from the -$2 Microsoft has already lost on every new query.)

  Don’t believe it?

  Let’s go to the numbers.

  In the March quarter, Microsoft’s online revenue grew $84 million year over year. In the same March quarter, Microsoft’s online cost-of-revenue grew $292 million.

  What drove that massive increase in cost of revenue?

  According to Microsoft’s latest filing, “costs associated with the Yahoo! search agreement and increased traffic acquisition costs.”

  The “costs associated with the Yahoo! search agreement,” of course, are the same as “traffic acquisition costs.” Microsoft is paying Yahoo about 90 cents of every $1.00 it generates from Yahoo’s search queries, and it is spending a lot of money supporting those queries. But Yahoo is no different than any other “traffic acquisition” deal Microsoft has for Bing–just bigger.

  So let’s say that again:

  In the past year, Microsoft’s online revenue grew $84 million. And its cost to generate that revenue grew $292 million.

  Does that sound like a promising business to you?

  Now, Microsoft will tell you that the reason they are spending all this money to buy search share is that search is scale game: You need a huge number of queries in order to optimize your results and raise keyword prices to levels that make the business profitable. Once Bing achieves this scale, Microsoft will continue to tell you, Microsoft’s revenue per keyword will soar, and Bing will go from losing billions every year to coining money. (For more on this, see these details from Bing boss Yusuf Mehdi, who is a great guy with a very hard job).

  Bing’s ongoing results suggest that this story is, at best, wishful thinking. At worst, it’s just a hallucination.

  The combined share of the Bing and Yahoo platforms is now approaching 30% of the US market.  That means that Bing already has significant scale.  And yet Bing's economics just continue to get worse.

  At the loss rate in the past quarter, in fact, Bing is now losing a spectacular $3 billion a year. $3 billion! This loss is ~$500 million more than Bing’s run-rate revenue, which is about $2.5 billion.

  Put differently, Bing is spending $5.5 billion a year to generate $3 billion of revenue.

  That’s horrifying. And it is almost impossible to believe that, if Bing gains another 10 points of market share, the economics of its business are going to change so radically that it will double its revenue per query, which it will need to do to break even (even if it doesn’t spend another dime acquiring and processing the next 10 points of share, which it obviously will). In fact, because there are no more big distribution deals to do, acquiring another 10 points of share will likely cost Microsoft a lot more than acquiring the last 5 points of share. Which means that doubling revenue-per-query won’t be anywhere near enough to make this a viable business).

  Fine, But Microsoft Has Come From Behind Before–And Won!

  In the PC business, Microsoft’s tenacity and Windows monopoly allowed it to come from behind to dominate many spectacularly profitable markets, with the crowning example being Office. (Microsoft was not the first to introduce spreadsheets or word processors, but it stuck with the business and ultimately buried the early competitors).  Microsoft has also managed to come from behind in another, unrelated business in which it had no expertise whatsoever: video-game consoles.  So whenever anyone challenges Microsoft's odds of success in the search business, Microsoft's defenders always cite these precedents, promising that, once again, Microsoft will come from behind to win.

  And, sure, there’s a chance that search will eventually be the same story all over again–that, eventually, Microsoft’s tenacity and vast pots of money will grind down Google and Bing will eventually go from losing billions a year to making some money. 

  But this chance seems, at best, small–not least because Google is a different order of competitor than WordPerfect and Lotus and even Sony.  Like Microsoft, Google is unfathomably wealthy and can spend whatever it needs to beating back Microsoft's threat.  And especially with Larry Page back at the helm, there are still some signs of competitive life at “The Plex.”

  And Remember–This Is Just A Sideshow (And A Distraction)

  There’s another, much-bigger problem here.

  Two years ago, Steve Ballmer used to justify the billions Microsoft was burning on Bing by saying that Microsoft needed to find other huge markets to go into to keep its growth alive–and search was clearly a huge market.

  But now it’s clear that Steve focused his obsession on the wrong market. And the wrong competitor.

  While Steve has thrown chairs in rage and burned billions obsessing about killing Google in search, he has been utterly ambushed by a former zombie competitor known as Apple.

  Unlike Google, which is competing in a market adjacent to Microsoft’s, Apple is competing directly with Microsoft. And as of this past quarter, Apple is now not only worth more than Microsoft and generates more revenue than Microsoft–it now makes more money than Microsoft.

  Apple invented the products that are now destroying Microsoft–the iPhone and the iPad–in the past 5 years.  Microsoft, meanwhile, missed these markets completely. 

  In other words, Steve picked the wrong huge opportunity.  By focusing all his energy on killing Google in search–and failing completely–Steve missed an even bigger opportunity that Apple invented out of thin air.

  THE BOTTOM LINE

  Based on Bing’s performance over the past decade, and especially over the past two years, we continue to think it’s unlikely that Microsoft’s online division will ever make money again.

  We also have to believe that the $3 billion Microsoft is burning every year on Bing could be better spent trying to compete with Apple and Google’s Android on tablets and phones (not to mention Macs and Chrome).

  Why?

  Because the stakes in the latter battle are very high.

  If Microsoft loses the Bing war, Microsoft will just lose a boatload of money.  If Microsoft loses the Apple-Android-Mac-Chrome war, meanwhile, Microsoft's core business will be destroyed.

  See Also: It’s Time For Microsoft To Face Reality About Search And The Internet

  For the latest tech news, visit SAI: Silicon Alley Insider. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

  Join the conversation about this story »

  See Also:

  • Microsoft Antitrust Oversight Ends In May, But Don’t Expect A Return To Its Old Ways
  • Everything You Need To Know About How Phones Are Stalking You Everywhere
  • Apple’s Profit Is Now HIGHER Than Microsoft’s

  
  

  

  

• Stealthopus

  

  Tagged: camouflage, gifs, mindwarp, nature, octopus, the ocean

  Submitted by: Unknown

  

  

• How To Austra-cize Common Sense

  (Restaurant | Sydney, Australia)

  (A customer asks for the bill. I give it to her.)

  Customer: “Hold on, where am I?”

  Me: “You’re in [restaurant].”

  Customer: “No, what country?”

  Me: “Seriously?”

  *blank stare*

  (At this moment I notice a large bag on the table next to her and a large travel backpack on the seat next to her.)

  Me: “Australia. Are you backpacking the world?”

  (The customer opens her bag and pulls out over a dozen envelopes with different countries written on them. France, Russia, China, Germany, Thailand, etc. She pulls Austria out of the pile.)

  Me: “No, it’s Australia.”

  (The customer puts it back and finds her Australia envelope. Out of the envelope comes Euros.)

  Me: “Okay, get Austria.”

  Customer: “You told me that’s wrong.”

  Me: “You misplaced your money.”

  (The customer reluctantly gets her Austria envelope again. Out of the envelope comes Australian dollars, which I happily accept. She puts everything back in the wrong envelope.)

  Me: “I think you should put them in the correct envelope this time. Euros doesn’t need to be separated by country. You can name multiple countries on that one envelope.”

  Customer: *yelling* “Don’t tell me what to do! I’m the one travelling, not you. Don’t forget, you’re the one who told me my first envelope was wrong!”

• A newspaper blackout by mayannee:

  Leave open the possibility of…

  

  A newspaper blackout by mayannee:

  Leave open the possibility of us.

  I’ve been doing so many of these

  

• Meanwhile in Germany

  

  Tagged: chairs, germany, gifs, office equipment, wtf

  Submitted by: Unknown

  

  

• HOWTO quilt a 3D Mad Tea Party set
  
  This Mad Tea Party tea-set was painstakingly quilted in 3D by Instructables user Technoplastique who documented the whole process in a great (if somewhat daunting) HOWTO:

  This tea set is made with quilting done in a dimensional way. It’s a set of 4 teacups, 4 saucers and a teapot. This version is made with a striped fabric so that each teacup has a different design, perfect for a mad tea party. The set is entirely hand sewn, so it’s a super project for keeping your hands busy in front of the tv.

  Quilted Mad Tea Party Set

  (Thanks, Christy!)

  
  

• “The Past” a blackout by David Jibson, Michigan
  

  “The Past” a blackout by David Jibson, Michigan

• The genius behind Radiohead’s live shows

  
  
  

  

• Hunting Bison Without Guns or Horses

  

  ##EMBED##

  Click Here for Sources and to Learn More Interesting Bison Facts

  Before horses and guns were introduced to Native Americans, hunting bison was a dangerous affair, the bison being quite aggressive and hard to kill.  One of the methods of hunting them that the Native Americans would then use was to attempt to herd a large group of bison into chutes of rock, which lead to a cliff.  They’d then incite a stampede with most of the herd falling to their deaths.  The meat and skins could then be easily gathered.

• TOM THE DANCING BUG: English Descendant of Medieval Psychopaths To Wed!

  

  
  

• Your taste is why your own work disappoints you

  I love this observation about taste and creative work from Ira Glass:

  Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.

  The quote is an abridged version of the transcript from this video interview with Glass:

  Tags: Ira Glass   video

• Rules for golfing during the blitz
  
  This sign was purportedly posted in 1940 in a north country British country club, regarding the special rules of play for bombed-out golf greens.

  Stiff Upper Lip

  (via Neatorama)