Khan Academy (dot com)

I'm ecstatic! And you should be too!

"The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit educational organization created by Salman Khan. With the stated mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of over 2,150 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics, history, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and economics.[1]"

Now, if you don't know me personally, I hate the education system. I’m in my second year of university and it’s the third semester in a row that has made me cringe and want to shed tears. I loathe it and I’m thinking to perhaps become a yoga teacher, since I love hot yoga, and it would allow me to do my own studies on the side.

Although TED waited a year to present Khan Academy, it could not have arrived at a better time.

There are infinite possibilities with this.

I’ve been meaning to finish my advanced math’s so that I could get into calculus and whatnot, but now, I don’t have to pay a dime, nor do I have to travel anywhere or deal with a half assed teacher to learn what I want. I can do it all on Khan.

This makes me wonder. Because of Khan’s features: measuring how many videos you’ve watched, how many exercises you’ve done, as well as which you’ve accomplished and failed, will this be a new measure for job prerequisites? Because it should.

Imagine.

Rather than having to get a degree at school, on somebody else’s time, you do it on you’re OWN time, for FREE.

Job employers can then see what you know, see what you’ve learned, and pick you out from there.

My stats:


This is going to change everything, EVERYTHING.


Here is Salman Khan's TED talk.



[1] - Michels, Spencer (2010-02-22). "Khan Academy: How to Calculate the Unemployment Rate". PBS NewsHour. PBS. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/02/khan-academy-how-to-calculate-the-unemployment-rate.html. Retrieved 2011-01-05.

If you’re not getting laid, or simply blowing it at life.

Obviously I’m not the first to write about this, nor is it an unfamiliar concept (or perhaps for some it is), but constant masturbation (without regularly having sex) is like giving the horse its carrot before it arrives at its destination. This goes both for men and women.

That sexual energy, that innate drive for reproduction, is our motivation in life. When we “rub ourselves out” we lack the chemicals and energy produced by the contact of a partner which gives us that sense of accomplishment. We release that tension, but we didn’t work for it. That creates a habit of laziness.

Now let me state, personally, I have a huge sex drive, huge I tell you (I’m almost 22 years old). I could masturbate several times a day if I wanted to, sometimes I do (insert mental image for those who know me), but it doesn’t help me. And what doesn’t help me, doesn’t help you either.

What makes you win in life, what shows strength, is the ability to produce content (assuming its good, which is a whole other topic itself). How do you produce content? By delaying gratification: working hard to create something.

By masturbating, you become more focused on instant gratification. Because you gave in to you’re desires you weaken you’re will power to delay gratification. And it makes you focus directly on what you want in that moment: sex – thus being incompetent around the opposite sex.

What I would recommend is to masturbate at most once a week. If you can, go for longer.

Not only will this make you stronger around the opposite sex, but it will make you stronger as an individual, helping you out in all areas of you’re life.

If you agree, disagree or have any comments, let me know!

How not to practice writing

The guys at copyblogger say that to be a good writer you should always be writing, even when you have nothing to write about, write, write, write.

For several reasons I think this is bad advice.

This is because their concept is based off of a misnomer, a fallacy deriving from the 10,000 hour rule (popularized by Gladwell in his book Outliers). The rule says that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master a skill. Though, as I guess wasn’t taken clearly, or perhaps simply forgotten by anxiousness and impulsivity: “practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect” – Gladwell.

Writing for the sake of writing does nothing, or little at least. Its like talking to nobody, with no message to deliver - how do you know how to say what you want to say?

Writing used as a cathartic medium on the other hand, has purpose; to release the tension of an idea. That practices how you manipulate and convey you’re thoughts. It’s passion, emotion and purpose that resonates with readers.

You need to practice writing when you have the need to express yourself. That’s where it starts.

First, ideas get jotted down in a few lines. Soon they turn into a page. Eventually (hopefully) with practice you’ll be writing pages worth of well-written ideas.

You become a better writer by practicing expressing yourself.

Without purpose you have nothing.
--

A Rant: Assumptions by Association

Socrates, in other words said this, “I know that I know nothing”

Nassim Taleb calls it being a skeptic.

Neither are wrong.

At a party, acquaintances of mine were baffled by my analogy of their logical mistake: all apples are fruits, but not all fruits are apples. It was to illustrate the fallacy in a generalization that had been made. For a good couple of minutes they were mind struck. Literally. “Not all fruits are apples!” They couldn’t believe it – neither could I.

It’s like saying all mac owners are hipsters, or vice versa.
Because of an empirical association, you’ve created an assumption.
Or take for example there are some conspiracers who hold all Jews accountable for 911, simple due to the mere coincidince that the individuals they are accusing happen to be Jewish.
Or how all Americans are fat and lazy.
The list of stereotypes goes on. Though the issue is that I think people haven’t realized that stereotypes go far beyond typing people (perhaps many have realized this, but certainly don’t apply it to everyday scenarios, never mind their thought process).

The world we live in is far too dense and complex. There’s no room for generalizations. Nothing is entirely what it seems. Yes you might have an empirical reference to look back on, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same situation all over again. Most likely this time your dealing with new people or a completely new environment. I think this is where the problem occurs. People don’t know that they don’t know. They think they know. That’s why; when things go wrong, people get surprised, which triggers emotions, most often negative ones. And emotions usually lead to illogical action.

Thing is, as Socrates stated, we don’t know anything for sure. Though, what we do have is an idea of something. Notice the difference. The contrast between knowing and having an idea is that the latter acknowledges the possibility of the unknown. In fact, the latter knows that the unknown is a valid and an entirely possible outcome.

Why do you think some people can’t make sense of this world, thus going insane and live in some sort of hallucination/fictional world? It starts with an event, which they can’t understand or explain. They don’t know that they don’t know. So the minds tries to find an explanation (they think they know). This (lie) false explanation thrives in their mind and persists. They then try to make sense of it (the lie) but can’t, since it makes no sense, and thus, neither does (their) reality.

This is about confronting the truth from the start, or acknowledging to not knowing it. When you can’t explain something sometimes you just shouldn’t** because you literally don’t have the knowledge to. That is the difference between sanity and insanity.

Life is measured in percentages. 80% of the time X happens, the other 20% A, B, C and infinite more possibilities might happen.

** Note it is perfectly understandable to come to ideas of what did/can/could/happen. But the fallacy comes from believing in an absolute truth.

I invent words. Though apparently I’m retarded.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing over the last 6 months, most of it has been on my laptop in word documents. What’s peculiar is that I often come across words that, apparently, don’t exist. You know, that red underlining, letting you know you misspelled a word. Though these words aren’t misspelled, they just don’t exist already (according to the status quo).

For example:

This is out of my history notes:

- Wants reform, but does not become a Protestant in the reformational sense

In my word document, reformational is underlined in red. Does that not make sense? I don’t see why it wouldn’t.

More examples of words that apparently don’t count in our English vocabulary:

Scientifical, academical, tosser (e.g. a coin tosser), catholized, protestantization, et cetera.

Who’s to say what words exist and which don’t?

Fuck the status quo.

ps: if you have invented words yourself, write them below, I'll add them to the list!

Maybe? Perhaps? Possibly?

?

tee heee heee

Seeing in slow motion/Living in the fast lane

Time is subjective. In fact time doesn't physically exist, its just an objective ticker we invented to use as a reference point, a benchmark perhaps in order to organize our busy lives.


Though whats interesting to look at is you one's perception of time, how the faster youre moving, the faster time passes, or the exact opposite. You might have noticed this when you are doing almost any exercise or activity and all of a sudden 2 hours have passed by in what felt like 15 minutes. The exact opposite can be said that when you aren't moving about, time seems to go by slower. Like when your staring at your clock and it feels like 5 minutes have gone by when its only been a minute or less.

I have a theory that perhaps living an active lifestyle keeps your mind sharp, or what I'm really trying to say is: it allows you to see in slow motion.

What I mean by active lifestyle is to enhance your ability of making snap judgments, and perhaps making all decisions in general. Perhaps there is a correlation between one's activity level(of mental and physical stimulation) and one's ability of making decisions which could also possibly translate to one's potential intelligence.

How I see this is that if your body is constantly active (active being physically and/or mentally stimulated) then it is living in the fast lane where time feels as though it is going by quickly. Thus when you slow down (ex: your sitting at your desk doing work or chatting, etc...), your mind is still in the "fast lane" and processes information just as fast. Though now you aren't moving as fast as you were so time seems to go by slowly, but your mind still processes information just as quickly, allowing you to perceive more, in less time.

Think of this analogy, to anyone who watched Dragon Ball Z:

In the shows there was a part when Goku had to go to some alien world to save his friends and combat some villain. But the gravity level on the planet he was heading to was much higher than what he was used to, so he had to train his body and workout in a high gravity bubble sort of thing, in order to get his body tuned to the right level.
Anyways, once he returned to earth, after having trained and fought on that alien planet at such a high gravity level, roaming on earth felt like a breeze and he could move at ridiculous speeds that couldn't have been achieved beforehand.


I also believe that the more active you are, the slower you will age, mentally and physically (though obviously other factors can come into place and change that).

Note: I do realize that you could relate all this to a physical level about health and fitness, about keeping the mind in shape or whatever.

Curiosity Killed the Motherfucking Cat

Aha!

I had written a whole article on how to create a universal worldview for change and I couldn't tell you why exactly but I absolutely hated it - which is why I didn't publish it. Now I know why I hated it.

I had the wrong approach, kind of.

But Seth Godin cleared things up for me in his rant on change junkies in his book Small is the New Big.

Its all too simple really!

Its all about getting people used to change! (duh)

Its actually not simply about change but more so about diversification, which in turn accustoms change.

So how do we do it?

First off, you have to start small, like with anything else in life.

Those that have the hardest time adapting to change are those who do the same things everyday, listen to the same few genres of music, always eat the same food and at the same restaurants.

They never (or rarely) do or try anything different.

Thus when something eccentric comes along, they aren't used to it. Their mind doesn't know how to adapt, so they get frightened and reject the idea. They're used to the old way and they like it.

In cities theres a lot of diversity. Different races, different kinds of restaurants on almost every street, its all one big clash of strangers having to interact with one an other.

Thats why you would find denser populations of liberals within cities. The city nearly forces them to be eccentric. The mindset is automatically created from their environment.

Though, we do still find segregation within cities. Perhaps its because these segregated folks only see the same people at the same places, doing the same things and essentially isolate themselves from society from the fear of trying something new.

The thing is that each time you are exposed to something, you become more familiar with it, thus it becomes easier to accept and perhaps even enjoy.

For example as a child I hated spinach, though I had to eat it. I didn't eat much of it at a time, though just enough to get the taste for it, but not too much that would have affiliated spinach with a radical negative emotion. Today I can say I enjoy eating spinach, at least much more than I used to.

Change, like everything in life, comes in small doses.
--
Theres many advantages to diversification.

For one you get to look at several different options, judge for youself and choose which ever option suits you best, your ideal objective (yet really subjective) choice.

Also I believe its crucial to diversify in this day in age since the near future promises so much change, already, as your reading this, things are changing at an exponential rate.

--

So my solution to become (more so) accustomed to change:

Diversify everyday little things in your life. Even try things that you don't like!

Start small, for example (some examples taken from Godin):

- Each week try a new type of food, or go to a restaurant you've never been
- Listen to an album from a genre of music you normally wouldn't listen to
- Take a new route to work
- Pickup a magazine from a topic you aren't familiar with
- Meet with people outside of your expertise

At the moment I am trying to eat mushrooms (not the psychedelic ones, though I have tried those to) every week.
Im also going to download some songs by Bruce Springsteen since I haven't really liked him in the past, though many of my friends think hes a god.

Actually last year I chose golf as my gym class because before that I hated golf. I had told myself maybe if I force myself to like it I will, and you know what, golf isn't all that bad, maybe I'll hit up the driving range sometime this summer.

---

What im most concerned about are conservatives and organized religions, which essentially are the same. Although you can find religious folks that diversify, but they are just confused and came to a conclusion, mostly because others have already accepted it for them, but thats a rant for an other time.

I don't get conservatives. Dont they get that their title, by definition, is against human progression? Dont they want to make this world a better place? They seem to be living in a dream world where everything is perfect as is already, which is the complete opposite of where the lifespan our specie is heading. The world is far from perfect.

One might argue that error is human, or that human is error, sure that's true at the moment, but with global warming and our specie on its way to extinction, that's an ignorant answer.

Anyways I don't think ignorance means anything to conservatives, they always seem to miss the point.

What conservatives need is a little eccentricity in their lives.

Blacks, asians, mexicans, europeans and middle-easterns need to move in with them. That would give them a little bit of perspective.

An other issue here is those living in Pakistan and in those surrounding areas where media is censored by their government.

I think censorship should be illigal.

In my post Micky Mouse with AK47s you can see what these people are brought up with.

What you see is what you get.

Ignorace was Bliss - Victor Mancini

Mind Reading

Will it ever be possible?

Perhaps. I would imagine so.

And perhaps youll even live to see it in your lifetime as well, even experience it if your lucky.

Though note im not talking about the “psychic” ESP form of telepathy, like a 6th sense, but more so through your 5 senses and by reading one’s body language and microexpressions.

You can already subconsciously and even consciously recognize the differences between anger, disappointment and most emotions when interacting with someone. But now that people are tapping into micro expressions and specifically identifying them (on a conscious level), there’s nearly no limit to what we could learn from one’s body language.

Visual micro expressions might not be our only clues to reading one’s mind. I'm sure we release certain smells that we aren’t even aware of (for the most part).

For example (this is random, yet somewhat relevant) but you can smell when a girl is horny or if she recently had sex. Surely same goes for guys, but hormones or something in the olfactory level is definitely released – a non verbal sign that communicates something.

So imagine if you could pinpoint micro expressions or other traits to specific thoughts!

Perhaps I will do some research, or if anyone else does, I’d like to know about it!

Purple Cow

Book #2 from Seth Godin

So this is a business/marketing book. And marketing is no longer a division of business. Marketing IS business. (sorry for the repetition)

We are now in the 21st C and the rules of marketing from the previous century don't run shit anymore. Well, that's not ENTIRELY true, the concepts can still apply, but this is now a whole new world.

What I mean is: the world is flat. Not flat like they believed 500 years ago, but flat as in “a flat world: a global, web-enabled platform for multiple forms of sharing knowledge and work, irrespective of time, distance, geography and increasingly, language.” http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/266

Remember the 4 P's or marketing, sometimes 5 ? Product, Price, Promotion, Place, People.

Well Purple Cow is the new P.

After reading this book I have realized that building a good business has the same core values as being a good human being. I would say your business reflects your personality and who you are. Thus if you want to start a business, time to hit the self help section @ chapters :P

It would be interesting to see what psychologists would have to say after analyzing someone's business and later having a session with them and compare the results.

Also as I was reading this, I was betting that Godin and Gladwell are friends and that Gladwell got his inspiration for Outliers from this very book.

I just sent an email to Godin before I started writing this, and (im not even surprised) 5 minutes later I received one back from him. Amazing. He is truly a marketing Guru.

(inside scoop: apparently Seth's fav restaurant in Canada is Aux Vivres, he told me so himself! hah!)

The Dip

My dad received a package from amazon yesterday, 7 new books! boooya!
6 of them are by Seth Goddin, a marketing guru. The other one is called Presentation Zen. I plan to read them all.

I only have 36 pages left of Wizard & Glass but for some reason I have no motivation to finish it. I just need a change of paste. (I was contemplating rereading Gladwell's books but this package arrived, not a moment too soon).

So I decided to read this one:



The subtitle explains what the book is about so theres no need for me to tell you.

Though what I will tell you, is that it is a real thought provoker(my favorite kinds of books) and tweaks the way you think of past experiences, the present, and how you will handle the future.

It creates a new scheme in your mind so to say. A new way to look at how you will be making decisions, which ones you should follow through and which ones you should quit.

Plus its a super easy read. I read it in like an hour or two and im not a fast reader.

Gladwell talks spaghetti sauce

Gladwell is probably my biggest inspiration for going into history, probably my biggest inspiration period. Everything he says or has written I can agree with, empathize or understand. He really blows my mind.

I would recommend checking out www.ted.com for lots of great speeches on so many domains: technology, entertainment, design, business, science and global issue. Theres a lot of information and inspiration to be found there I can promise you that.

And if you like Malcolm Gladwell he has a blog along with his web site.

STARFUCKERS

These guys played here on a Sunday night about 2 months ago, on what was possibly one of the worst nights ever for me to go out just as school was finishing up. So bummed on missing them.

watch them blow up over the next year and be in every movie and commercial, if they haven't already

http://www.myspace.com/starfuckerss

enjoi or die.

golden isles moving up in the world

golden isles (idk why they changed their name? personally crystal moustache is way sicker) were in the arts & life sec of the gazette on wednesday, in the whats on your ipod list. pretty random.


http://www.myspace.com/goldenislesmusic

i want to party with this guy

http://www.blackboxdist.com/i/popup/jimmy-carlin-experience/index.html



actually thats a lie, lol, i really wouldnt

THIS BUM IS LIKE OBAMA!

ENFJ/ENFP

I took the test and it says im ENFJ. I read the descriptions and it nails me to the dot.

Though,

I was doing some further reading on other types, and ENFP really brings me home as well.

So I am going to conclude as being both, ENFJ & ENFP.


anyone else ENFJ and/or ENFP ?

your personality in 4 letters

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator

So check it:
There are 16 categories of personalities.
Each personality type consists of 4 letters to form an acronym:

Extraversion
Introversion
Sensing
iNtuition
Thinking
Feeling
Judging
Perceiving

So why would you want to know what kind of personality type you are?

Well for one by learning your personality type you can learn a lot more about yourself. Theres been a lot of research done behind each personality type from how they interact in personal relationship to impersonal relationships and even what kinds of people your most compatible with and to which jobs would suite you best.

There are forums where you can discuss with others of your personality type and learn how they deal with certain issues of life. The craziest part is reading posts from others of the same personality. You would think these people had known you your whole life. I would actually wish everyone knew about this site because I really want to connect with more of my type.

Im an ENFJ and we only consist of about 2-3% of the world's population, so meeting others like me is pretty rare.

I would recommend checking out www.personalitycafe.com

Its the only forum I know of, but its really good. I found out about it last night and iv been reading it nonstop, I actually didnt go to bed last night my mind was way too stimulated, some of the posts and descriptions people have written just blew my mind. I was reading about this stuff till dawn lol.

If you want to find out what personality type you are this is a brief test that will tell you: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

Im not 100% sure of its accuracy but I had done a more rigorous personality test a while ago, and my personality type matched up with this test as well. So im pretty sure its legit.