Conan, what is best in life?
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.
Fear shortage, hope mongering and Barack Obama
Today, Seth Godin made some very good points about fear mongering. In particular, I like his call that it should be regulated or even banned. Instead, he is in favor of hope mongering.
Feeling inspired by this, I quickly checked to see if hopemongering.com was registered. Not only is it registered, but the domain forwards to BarackObama.com. The domain was registered privately, so I can’t see if it was done by the President’s campaign team or if some ingenious supporter did it for them. But it put a smile on my face.
The most useless machine ever. The description on Youtube says, “and yet everyone wants one.” They’re right. I do want one. For instructions on how to build, click here.
The 50th Law
Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, recently co-authored a book with rapper 50 Cent. I haven’t read it yet, but here’s a Slideshare presentation of the chapter headings and selected quotes.
I was in Nashville, Tennesee last year, after the show I went to a Waffle House, I’m not proud of it, I was hungry. And I’m alone, I’m eating and I’m reading a book, right? Waitress walks over to me, “Tch tch tch tch. Hey, what you readin’ for?” Is that like the weirdest fucking question you’ve ever heard? Not what am I reading, but what am I reading for. Well, goddammit, you stumped me. Why do I read? Well… hmmm… I guess I read for a lot of reasons, and the main one is so I don’t end up being a fucking waffle waitress.
The Muppets sing Bohemian Rhapsody.
A farmer had only one horse.
One day, his horse ran away. All the neighbors came by saying, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.” The man just said, “We’ll see.”
A few days later, his horse came back with twenty wild horses. The man and his son corraled all 21 horses. All the neighbors came by saying, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!” The man just said, “We’ll see.”
One of the wild horses kicked the man’s only son, breaking both his legs. All the neighbors came by saying, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.” The man just said, “We’ll see.”
The country went to war, and every able-bodied young man was drafted to fight. The war was terrible and killed every young man, but the farmer’s son was spared, since his broken legs prevented him from being drafted. All the neighbors came by saying, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!” The man just said, “We’ll see.”
—
I’ve seen this fable in a few places. I used to think that I had to react in kind to life’s ups and downs. But I find myself mellowing out a lot and taking everything in stride.
Poke around this guy Derek Sivers’ site. He’s got a lot of good stuff. And apparently founded CDbaby, a publish on demand service for musicians.
Jonathan Eakman demonsrates poor online reputation management
So apparently, this guy named Jonathan Eakman managed to break into Google’s Hot Trends (100 current hottest searches on Google) because one of his 180 “friends” on Facebook leaked something he psoted to his wall. What was it they shared with the public that made people so curious about him so quickly?
He got kicked out of grad school before he even started.
Start taking the time to consider what it is you’re sharing on your Facebook profile, you Twitter feed, or anywhere else online. Even email is only click away from being shared with people you don’t know or trust. So start operating under the assumption that anything you say online might be shared with everyone.
The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think that it’s real, because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly coloured, and it’s very loud and it’s fun for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us. They say “Hey! Don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride.”
And we… kill those people. Ha ha ha. “Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and family. This just has to be real.” It’s just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn’t matter because it’s just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want.
It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourselves off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here’s what you can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defence each year and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, for ever, in peace.
— Bill Hicks
As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came — though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents — to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment-an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections. It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the ‘merely personal,’ from an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in its pursuit. The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of our capabilities presented itself to my mind, half consciously, half unconsciously, as a supreme goal. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights they had achieved, were the friends who could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.
— Albert Einstein
Posted May 20, 2009 at 10:27am
