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The Redneck Riviera earns it's nick name honestly and in my opinion it's the Carolina Redneck's that make this fabulous beach town so great. Having lived in South Florida for 12 years and only visited Myrtle Beach a couple of times, mostly just a drive-by kind of thing, I was under the impression that the people and the place would be more like Ft. Lauderdale, which can be described as a sunny place filled with shady people, but alas I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the two beach towns have very few similarities.

Click on the photo for a larger picture.

Here's some words of wisdom from Alexander Graham Bell, a renowned scientist and inventor. In 1876, at the age of 29, he invented the telephone.

"The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion... It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider - and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation - persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree."

It turns out that my Mom is born in the year of the pig, so we've been writing back and forth to share little things we've learned about this auspicious year. Now an Asian friends from Vancouver informed me that Chinese people are excited because we're entering the "Year of the Golden Pig" and it only happens every 60 or so years.

This morning I watched a chilling report on BBC World about how websites and the Internet are used to promote and recruit for global Islamic terror networks. Just writing about this topic makes me nervous because we're such a networked world and the search engines pick up and connect every word, which is why I'll avoid using any organization names or provide any web site locations. The power of the Internet to bring good into people's lives has always been the focus of my attention, so much so that I neglected to think much about how the web was being used for evil.

I stand corrected about the concept of a "Social Footprint" thanks to a message from Mark McElroy the Executive Director of The Center for Sustainable Innovation, I've learned that a team of esteemed sustainability researchers, and management consulting veterans, introduced the Social Footprint methodology and Proof of Concept to the world, just one year ago this coming March.

"The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved."

-Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

Especially pertinent to people in the on-line gaming industry that enjoy travel to, or living in USA.

Wallace Arthur Day

Today is my Dad’s birthday; born this day in 1931 he’ll be 76 years old. I imagine he’s celebrating the day by skiing at his local ski resort Big White.

My good friends from Miami own a landscape business, they impressed upon me the beauty of landscape as an art-form, and then introduced me to the work of a Brazilian legend.

Roberto Burle Marx is internationally known as one of the most important landscape architects of the 20th century.

An artist of multiple facets, besides being a landscape designer he was also a remarkable painter, sculptor, singer, and jewelry designer, with a sensibility that is shown throughout his work.

There's a passage I got memorized....
seems appropriate for this situation: Ezekiel 25:17.

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.

And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."

Jules@PulpFiction

Today is election day in Brasil and I visited two different voting centers in Sao Paulo, each in elementary schools, outside of both the sidewalks were littered with paper cards advertising the faces, slogans, and corresponding voting numbers for the candidates. Each candidate has a unique number. Voters are instructed to insert one number in each screen of the computerized voting terminal, to select one candidate for each of the administrative positions requiring a vote, one of which is for the President of the country. Voting is mandatory for Brasilian citizens, otherwise more than half the people wouldn't show-up.

My entire life I've held a fascination with the USA, having grown up less than an hours drive from the border, I spent weekends in the winter skiing on a mountain with a ski club called "Borderline". From the top of the mountain you could see as far as the eye could see into Washington State. Many of the ski club members, my friends, were from the States (as we called it). As I grew older the appeal for the land of the free and home of the brave grew and grew, while I often crossed the border with my friends to explore some of the regions closest to British Columbia.

When I was 18 years old I made a trip to Hawaii and for 2 weeks and got a full adult version (I was legal drinking age) of the culture of America, that was the start of a long romance.

My writing assignment today is to write something suitable for this Blog's category "body" and since I'm not feeling inclined to write about my own body, which is getting fitter but fatter, I'll save that for another article. So I ran a search in Yahoo News of the word "health" and read a round-up of the days news stories related to health. The 2 stories which were news-worthy to me, and relevant to "body" were about Bird-Flu reaching Canada and another article about substance abuse and painkillers in USA.

Today I came across a brilliant article by a columnist in UPI, about U2 by a writer named Margaret Benefiel. She's promoting a new book called Soul at Work and also has an interesting website called Executive Soul. I'm going to share an excerpt from the article that caught my eye and then I'm going to post a description of her new book and I highly suggest checking out the work of Margaret Benefiel, I know I will.

With only a few days left till the first match of the World Cup the excitement is building and the flags are being hoisted, pasted, adorned and displayed on cars, houses, businesses,buildings and people. Of the previous 2 World Cups, both times I was living in South Florida where there are over 100,000 Brazilians living and making presence known during the largest sporting event in the world but nothing compares to being in the country for this historic event, although the craziest sports fans in the world will be out in force in Germany.