What You Should Really Be Afraid Of...

Found unsourced on Facebook.

What is Unknown?

How many things do we really take for granted and actually know very little about? John Lloyd gives a short overview, supported by entertaining illustrations.

Imaging at a trillion frames per second

Ramesh Raskar presents femto-photography, a new type of imaging so fast it visualizes the world one trillion frames per second, so detailed it shows light itself in motion. This technology may someday be used to build cameras that can look "around" corners or see inside the body without X-rays.

 Read the story here.

Art and Memory

Getting back on fiscal track

Motivational speaker Tony Robbins explores options for dealing with the US national debt and getting back on track. Certainly stimulating...

U.S. Family Net Worth Drops to Level of Early ’90s

The recent economic crisis left the median American family in 2010 with no more wealth than in the early 1990s, erasing almost two decades of accumulated prosperity, the Federal Reserve said Monday in a New York Times story.

A hypothetical family richer than half the nation’s families and poorer than the other half had a net worth of $77,300 in 2010, compared with $126,400 in 2007, the Fed said. The crash of housing prices directly accounted for three-quarters of the loss.

Families’ income also continued to decline, a trend that predated the crisis but accelerated over the same period. Median family income fell to $45,800 in 2010 from $49,600 in 2007. All figures were adjusted for inflation.

The survey also confirmed that Americans are shifting the kinds of debts they carry. The share of families with credit card debt declined by 6.7 percentage points to 39.4 percent, and the median balance fell 16.1 percent to $2,600. 

Families also reduced the number of credit cards that they carried, and 32 percent of families said they had no cards, up from 27 percent in 2007.

The new data comes from the Fed’s much-anticipated release on Monday of its Survey of Consumer Finances, a report issued every three years that is one of the broadest and deepest sources of information about the financial health of American families.

Why does "x" stand for the unknown?

In this short and funny TED talk, Terry Moore gives the surprising answer...

The Changing Face of Europe

Turn up the speakers and watch the borders ebb and flow over the centuries...

BitCoin - the new currency?

Remember how PayPal revolutionized Internet payments? 

Imagine a similar system where no central bank or institution holds all the gold and there are no grubby little men investing your money as it moves between accounts. Welcome to Bitcoin (BTC), the Webs first peer-to-peer digital crypto currency that allows individuals to exchange money quickly, safely and anonymously over the Internet without the need for banks, cards, transfer fees or delays. 

How Does it Work? How Do I Get Some? Technically speaking Bitcoins are very safe – each coin is heavily encrypted and stored virtually across the network of machines running the Bitcoin software (That’s your cue to download & install it! Don’t worry…I’ll wait!). Once you have done this you can literally claim your FREE MONEY by visiting the Bitcoin Faucet and they will deposit your first Bitcoins into your account for free! (The amount they give away is dropping as the Bitcoin gains in strength, so hurry!) Take a deep breath! Feel empowered. Feels good doesn’t it? Great, now continue… 

 

Yale Law School’s Reuben Grinberg has written a fascinating paper assessing the legal implications of this new currency concluding that it has the “potential to be a significant player” and due to it’s digital nature “operates in a legal grey area” which would put it out of reach of the Federal government. Time magazine’s Techland suggested it was the online currency to challenge banks and governments. Bright Economic Outlook The Bitcoin has been rapidly (and steadily) increasing in value, doubling in January alone according to one source, with Forbes reporting that an estimated about $30,000 worth of Bitcoins are spent each day! (If this isn’t a stable currency, what is!?). 

You can mine (generate) bitcoins of your own, and the processing time your computer uses goes towards helping process other users’ online transactions and re-enforce the security of the system itself. In effect, the monetary value is measured against processing time, rather than gold. What Can I Buy? A number of sites accept Bitcoins for payment and this is rapidly growing. 

You can buy anything from food to gifts and this month a rival service to eBay was launched called Bidding Pond, run entirely on Bitcoins! In fact, lead developer Gavin Andresen has been invited to speak at the CIA headquarters next month suggesting that the U.S. government is interested in this development. 

Yes, the Bitcoin has gone from strength to strength. Each time I buy some, I look at the exchange rate and wish I’d bought more the previous time! They say necessity is the mother of invention, and this depression might just have helped a few geeks come up with a system that may actually replace money altogether. 

As the Bitcoin becomes more mainstream (and it will over the next six months!) it is likely to find friends amongst the open source shopping cart community (there are already plugins for Wordpress WP-eCommerce, Prestashop, Open Cart, ZenCart and numerous others) and will then replace Paypal (as it will be faster, free and not depend on a real-world bank or debit card). 

An extract from Roger Davies recent article on Bitcoins (link)

Improve Mental Health

A recent Wired article focused on weaning ourselves off junk data and suggests these 9 steps to improve mental fitness...

Enemies of Greatness (and Happiness)

I found this on a recent Forbes blog post by Jessica Hagy:

The Six Enemies of Greatness (and Happiness)

The Six Enemies of Greatness (and Happiness)
These six factors can erode the grandest of plans and the noblest of intentions. They can turn visionaries into paper-pushers and wide-eyed dreamers into shivering, weeping balls of regret. Beware!

 1) Availability
We often settle for what’s available, and what’s available isn’t always great. “Because it was there,” is an okay reason to climb a mountain, but not a very good reason to take a job or a free sample at the supermarket.

 2) Ignorance
If we don’t know how to make something great, we simply won’t. If we don’t know that greatness is possible, we won’t bother attempting it. All too often, we literally do not know any better than good enough.

 3) Committees
Nothing destroys a good idea faster than a mandatory consensus. The lowest common denominator is never a high standard.

 4) Comfort
Why pursue greatness when you’ve already got 324 channels and a recliner? Pass the dip and forget about your grand designs.

5) Momentum
If you’ve been doing what you’re doing for years and it’s not-so-great, you are in a rut. Many people refer to these ruts as careers.

6) Passivity

There’s a difference between being agreeable and agreeing to everything. Trust the little internal voice that tells you, “this is a bad idea.”

Who Actually Votes in America?

Shake and Fold

Saving the planet one towel at a time! Great instructional video in 5 minutes.

Existential Cat Existence

Freedom to contemplate brings critical insights...

Abundance

In their new book Abundance, technology gurus Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler offer an alternative view to the current gloom and doom: 

"What does the world really look like? Turns out it's not the nightmare most suspect. Violence is at an all-time low, personal freedom at a historic high. During the past century child mortality decreased by 90% while the average human life span increased by 100%. Food is cheaper and more plentiful than ever (groceries cost 13 times less today than in 1870). Poverty has declined more in the past 50 years than the previous 500. In fact, adjusted for inflation, incomes have tripled in the past 50 years. 

Even Americans living under the poverty line today have access to a telephone, toilet, television, running water, air-conditioning, and a car. Go back 150 years and the richest robber barons could have never dreamed of such wealth. "Nor are these changes restricted to the developed world. In Africa today a Masai warrior on a cellphone has better mobile communications than the President of the United States did 25 years ago; if he's on a smartphone with Google, he has access to more information than the President did just 15 years ago, with a feast of standard features: watch, stereo, camera, video camera, voice recorder, GPS tracker, video teleconferencing equipment, a vast library of books, films, games, music. 

Just 20 years ago these same goods and services would have cost over $1 million... "Right now all information-based technologies are on exponential growth curves: They're doubling in power for the same price every 12 to 24 months. This is why an $8 million supercomputer from two decades ago now sits in your pocket and costs less than $200. This same rate of change is also showing up in networks, sensors, cloud computing, 3-D printing, genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics and dozens more industries." 

Despite relentless media negativity - designed to attract viewers and thus advertisers - most of society's trend lines are overwhelmingly positive.  See the full article at Investment U linked here.

Are People Reading More?

A recent poll by Gallop suggests that the popular concern that people are reading less than ever is not correct.

How about you... are you reading more than in the past?  I certainly consume pages of online news everyday, but still enjoy my magazines as well.  Most fiction is reserved for long airplane rides (of which I have many).  

This chart taken from a short post in the Atlantic.

Of course, this does not address the number of unread books piled in the study... I keep buying books much quicker than I get to reading them.  I find it a motivating sight... great titles on the shelf waiting for their moment in my hands.  I was gifted with a Spindle last holiday, but still have not downloaded my first book.

How healthy living can kill you

A humorous commentary on becoming too healthy...