Really cool stream punked furniture
These chairs on boing boing today are really cool. Really cool, but I dont think I would want to have them. Imagine how cold they would get on a cold day??
http://m.boingboing.net/2011/04/07/jet-age-chairs-at-re.html
Entrance maketh the man – at least in Russia
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Totally kick ass. Now here’s how you make an entrance.
The dog on the train – BART
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It’s just another day, except this was different.
It was one of the few days I head up into the city (San Francisco) for a couple of meetings. Instead of driving as I usually do, I decided to take the train. It was early enough in during the commute time that I could still get a seat. I sat down and started to have a look around. It’s habit. I like to be aware of the environment around me. It was the usual mix of daily commuters on the train, except for one. A lady; probably in her mid 20′s sat a few rows in front of me. on her lap sat her dog. One of those dogs that look like they have a beard and extremely bushy eye brows. A little research online told me that they are called Schnauzer’s. Cute little fellow, sitting there chewing on his chew toy. Beside her was a little baby pram. Seemed normal enough.
After a few minutes of vigorous chewing, her dog got fed up with his toy and dropped it. The owner bent down, picked up the toy and tossed it into the pram. Hmmm… that does not seem very sanitary for the baby; I thought to myself. Then I realized that the lady had been playing with her dog the whole time and had not even once looked into the pram to see how the baby was doing. I decided to pay a little more attention to the pram. It was then that I realized that the pram was not for a baby buy for the dog.. it was a doggie pram.
Just like regular human baby prams it had a sun hood, looked like it folded for easy storage, had zippers and compartments for storing toys and treats and actually seemed very very study. I would say looked more sturdy than a lot of baby prams. The only thing that gave it away was the brand that was stamped at the top of the hood – “Pet Gear” http://www.amazon.com/Pet-Gear-Trails-Stroller-30-pounds/dp/B0006Z9RB2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1271711560&sr=8-1
The following description is from the Pet Gear Inc, website:
“Pet Gear strollers are a great way to take your pet with you on a long walk through the park, a walk around the block, or maybe even shopping at the mall. They safely contain and protect your pet wherever you go. The Happy Trails Plus stroller has a fashionable Euro-Canopy, removable weather guard, large storage basket, parent tray, waterproof interior pad, front swivel wheels, shock absorbers, and rear brakes.”
Something is very wrong with this image. Isn’t the whole point of taking your dog for a walk to WALK YOUR DOG? For your dog to get exercise? I mean, am I being old fashioned by thinking that this is a little crazy?
What do you’ll think?
Creating Heroes to save the world
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its been a long time since I wrote a long blog post, but this is worth it!
We as a race of people are always fascinated by Heroes. As children and as adults, we love to read super hero comics and watch movies about super heroes. The theme of most successful move involves heroes of some sort, doing something out of the ordinary and something heroic. It captures our imagination and sweeps us up into a land of fantasy. Heroes are things of legend. Right?
What if that is not true. What if we all have the capability and the capacity of being a hero. Doing something extra ordinary. Saving people and making a difference in the world. Wouldn’t that be an amazing world to live in? Well guess what. It is the world we live in; and it is possible for every single one of us to be HEROES.
Welcome to the word of Dr. Philip Zimbardo. Dr. Z as he is affectionately called by his students is professor emeritus at Stanford University where he has spent 50 years teaching and studying psychology. Philip Zimbardo is one of the most distinguished living psychologists, having served as President of the American Psychological Association, designed and narrated the award winning 26-part PBS series, Discovering Psychology, and has published more than 50 books and 400 professional and popular articles and chapters, among them, Shyness, The Lucifer Effect, and The Time Paradox. He is best-known to the public for his controversial Stanford Prison Experiment that highlighted the ease with which ordinary intelligent college students could cross the line between good and evil when caught up in the matrix of situational and systemic forces.
He has made it his life time goal to study human behavior; specifically what makes people do “bad” things, and what makes people do good. His latest book the “Lucifer Effect” explores this in detail. In his book he talks about Lucifer (commonly known to all of us as the DEVIL) In fact, Lucifer was god’s FAVORITE angel until he disobeyed god and was banned into HELL. Hows does someone so good. Someone so pure; go from being the very representation of good into being the very representation of evil?
Dr. Z, says that heroes are not born heroes. They do not have special powers. Its their belief and the situation that makes a hero. By studying heroes over time; both the famous heroes of history past and newer everyday heroes from around the world he is convinced that “EVERYONE IS A HERO IS WAITING” Given the right situation we all have it in us to shine and do heroic deeds. Even something like taking some time to teach the elderly and non tech savvy how to use the internet or the computer can make you a hero. You are the person you are helping’s hero. Standing up to domestic abuse can make you a hero.
Dr. Z talks about this at his 2008 TED appearance where he introduced the idea of the Heroic Imagination Project (www.heroicimagination.org) or HIP for short. The Heroic Imagination Project (HIP) will inspires ordinary people to trigger extraordinary social change. HIP is based on the insight that all people have the capacity to act heroically, and that it’s possible to prepare anyone to be a hero when called upon.
I mean what an amazing goal. The more i read about and learn about this project, it just makes me happy. It makes me happy because i truly this that something like this could have an amazing impact on peoples outlook. HIP plans on introducing school based curriculum to educate middle and high school children about heroism. Image, a new generation of children brought up with the knowledge that they can be heroes. That helping others is the correct thing to do. This does not mean to go out and act irrationally, but to know what is right. From what I gather; frameworks and modals are being developed that will allow teachers to analyze heroes of the past and teach the underlying principals the guided that person to do something heroic. Those same principals can be used in everyday life by us, whether its standing up to a school bully, or helping an elderly person cross the road.
It all comes down to DOING THE RIGHT THING.
I wish Dr. Zimbardo and the whole HIP team all the very best in this endeavor and here’s to a better and brighter tomorrow!
Source: www.heroicimagination.org
Tiger Woods is not to blame.
I think we should blame Nike. After all they endorsed the shit out of him and kept telling him “Just Do It”
[News] 18 year old man kidnapped, held at church, and raped by a woman.
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And that my dear readers is the story in a nutshell.
The details are as follows.
According to the Zimdiaspora, the 18 year old teenager was running an errand for his boss at a shopping center in Chitungwiza , New Zealand Zimbabwe. As he pulled into the parking lot, 3 women in a car pulled up next to him and forced him into their car. They then proceeded to take him to a church and lock him up. One of the women then came in and forced him to have sex with her.
The story then goes on to say that she called up his employers wife to let her know that he was safe and not to worry about him…
WAIT A MINUTE.
Did I just read that correctly? How did she know who his employer was, and more than that, what his employers wife’s number was? This sounds a little fishy to me.
What do you’ll think?
Ohh.. so the women let him go the next day by driving him to another shopping center and letting him out.
How are they still in business?
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I’m talking yellow pages here.
Who uses them anymore? I’m really curious. I haven’t touched one in at least 6 years. No one I know has used one in years. Even my parents who are not the most computer literate will now “Google” something.
For the more tech savvy, lets look at the tsunami of options that are available for us.
- There is the traditional 411 which costs lots of money.
- 1800 Goog411 which is free and is awesome.
- There is the Google text service where you sms them what you are looking for and they text you back the answer.
- There Google maps that can look up quite alot of places that you want.
and these are just tools on the mobile phone. Give me a computer with an internet connection and the sky is the limit.
So that goes back to the main question, how are they surviving? Remember the old tag line “Let your fingers do the walking”? Well, I’m sad to say that it does not look like those old fingers have a lot more walking left in them.
National Bookstore Day
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Yup, You read that right. The United States of America now has a National Bookstore Day.
There used to be a time (not too long ago) were having a day named after you or after a particular purpose actually meant something (eg: Martin Luther King Day, Veterans Day, etc…).These days of meaning seem to have seen their last light of day.
It seems as if every day is some sort of obscure day, or every week is some sort of week or every month is some sort of month.
Its at a point where its starting to get annoying. I mean, seriously. Give a dude a chance. I’m still trying to get leave to celebrate Chinchilla day.
I digress.. back to books. I love them. I love to sit down and have a nice read. You know actually thumb through the pages of a real book instead of scrolling through pages on a monitor.
Books are expensive to keep buying and once you have bought a book, how many times do you really read it? I have a bunch of books and at most i’ve read a book 2 times. Renting is totally the way to go.
I wrote about a cool new startup called Rentalic a little while ago. Well this is perfect. People with a whole bunch of books can list their entire library out on Rentalic and rent them out to other users.
To visit Rentlic go to www.rentalic.com
We need a national rent your books out day!
[news] – US resort offers $219 room for $19 with a tent
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I think I am losing my mind. I am not a marketing guru or anything like that, but this just does not make any sense to me.
I just finished reading an article on BBC News that The Rancho Bernardo Inn, a “Luxury Resort” here in the United States was offering rooms that usually start at $219 for as low as $19 a night. I understand that part. That’s actually a damm good deal. It’s this next part that I don’t understand.
The room starts at $219, but the resort will then reduce the price of the room for each amenity you don’t want in the room.
The cheapest deal – $19 – means guests sacrifice a bed, breakfast, air-conditioning, towels, toilet paper, a mini-bar and lighting.
Staff will even unscrew the headboard from the wall – but leave a small tent.
Wait, did I read that right? They even take out the toilet paper (a roll costs less than $0.50. Probably much less when they buy it wholesale).
General manager John Gates said that during tough economic times it was a way to help people stay at a nice resort who normally could not afford to.
So you take everything nice out of the room so its worse than a 2 start dump (last I checked even 2 star motels gave you toilet paper) and think your giving people a way of saying at a “NICE RESORT“?
What makes even less economic sense is that your room is going empty anyway. So instead of letting someone stay there at $19 with full comfort (which might actually convince the person to come back and pay full price) you increase your overheads by getting your staff to strip the room on a per client basis, so they can stay in a TENT IN AN EMPTY ROOM with NO toilet paper and expect them to come back and pay full price next time???
DUDE, WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING?
Source: BBC News.
[Funny] Flight from Sacramento to San Francisco – $ 353.00
I am subscribed to price alerts for flights out of the Sacramento, CA airport. Most times it is quite useful and lets me find some good deals, but every now and then I get some real jems like this offer.
I mean seriously…. Who priced this flight. For those who are not familiare with the geography of this area, you can drive from Sacramento to San Francisco in under an hour.
keep looking »