Author: Aaron

Just Hanging Out…

I had that feeling, upon entering the second hand store, that there was something in there I needed to find. It was a glorious Saturday in March and a little framed print caught my eye, on one of the lower shelves of a tightly packed array, when I went to the trouble to bend down, reach in and pull it out to look, the moment I saw eyes looking back at me I was thrilled and clutched it, then bought it, and came immediately home to hang it up.

Here’s the image from the Michelle Kuen Suet Fung website and her story of creating; Just Hanging Out…

Just Hanging Out 遊戲人間, 2008. Ink and Coloured Pencils on Paper 鋼筆、木顏色紙本 8×10″ Private Collection.

Michelle Kuen Suet Fung 馮捲雪!

“Just Hanging Out” is my most popular series to date.

Sometimes a great series was meticulously researched and carefully planned. Other times, it just happened.

This series just happened.

Late 2008, under the dark sky deep into the wee hours of the evening, I buried myself in the studio, physically tired yet with blade-sharp concentration. I was in that trance where I wanted to stay up all night and create. (No, with no aid of drugs. See point 54.) I grabbed a piece of paper and started drawing.

There! it was done in one sitting.

To be honest, when I finished it, I treated it as one of my many drawings. I never paid much attention to it. I didn’t even like it that much. I didn’t do anything with it until in Jan 2009, I took this drawing (along with other works) to Doctor Vigari Gallery. The drawing was sold within a month and I had constant positive feedback from people.

The central tree is a symbolic tree of life and the various little people or animals/objects “just hanging out” with the tree parallel how we all just hanging out during the span of our lifetime. I use this context to ask some of my endless questions about life, death, love…I chose to take a playful approach rather than a didactic one. I prefer to be provided with a space to medidate rather than told how/what to think. This translate into how I want my viewers to approach my works. The light-hearted imageries reduces the emotional guard of adults. No matter how much one cannot identify with these big-eyed figures, it is rather difficult to be intimidated by them.

In this particular drawing (which was only meant to be a stand-alone drawing in the beginning), I ask questions about life and death. A baby, wrapped in a soft cocoon, is hung from a leaveless tree in a style not unlike on a death rope. The tree is in its withering (or resting) stage, whereas the baby in its cocoon suggests a glorious metamorphosis.

I love playing with contradiction within one image. My mother is in love with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. (Alas I was into her sister’s Wuthering Heights more. Mom was not pleased that I was into the wild passion as a teen. See point 23) She always quoted “a bundle of contradictions” when I was a girl. I have always found the term befit me well. So there, as I say in my artist statement, none of my artworks is self portrait, but I acknowledge a lot of myself in them.

Please visit the Official website of Michelle Kuen Suet Fung

More promotion of Michelle Kuen Suet Fung, as she has an awesome exhibition to reduce plastic waste and help raise awareness of the danger to nature, with her exhibition called: Plastic, plastic, every where! 天空膠雨

March 9, 2019
Flower of Life

Flower of Life pattern

I feel compelled to begin blogging again, since I have some ideas and information I’d like to share and also want to keep a few things posted here for myself. Actually, I’ve always thought the best thing about blogging was to collect information that makes me pleased that it’s been added.

The Flower of Life has been partly what prompted me to make this post, as rumour has it, that particulates had been reported, containing this design, or similar, in the very molecular structure of the dust that had dropped.

The name “Flower of Life” is modern, associated with the New Age movement, and commonly attributed specifically to Drunvalo Melchizedek in his book The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life (1999).

Cultural significance

Near East

The oldest known occurrence of the “overlapping circles” pattern is dated to the 7th or 6th century BCE, found on the threshold of the palace of Assyrian king Aššur-bāni-apli in Dur Šarrukin (now in the Louvre).

The design becomes more widespread in the early centuries of the Common Era. One early example are five patterns of 19 overlapping circles drawn on the granite columns at the Temple of Osiris in Abydos, Egypt, and a further five on column opposite the building. They are drawn in red ochre and some are very faint and difficult to distinguish. The patterns are graffiti, and not found in natively Egyptian ornaments. They are mostly dated to the early centuries of the Christian Era although medieval or even modern (early 20th century) origin cannot be ruled out with certainty, as the drawings are not mentioned in the extensive listings of graffiti at the temple compiled by Margaret Murray in 1904..

Similar patterns were sometimes used in England as apotropaic marks to keep witches from entering buildings. Consecration crosses indicating points in churches anointed with holy water during a churches dedication also take the form of overlapping circles.

A girih pattern that can be drawn with compass and straight edge

Window cage at Topkapı Palace, using pattern

Further information: Girih

In Islamic art, the pattern is one of several arrangements of circles (others being used for fourfold or fivefold designs) used to construct grids for Islamic geometric patterns. It is used to design patterns with 6- and 12-pointed stars as well as hexagons in the style called girih. The resulting patterns however characteristically conceal the construction grid, presenting instead a design of interlaced strapwork.

Europe

Patterns of seven overlapping circles are found on a Cypro-Archaic cup of the 8th-7th century BC in Cyprus^] and Roman mosaics, for example at Herod’s palace in the 1st century BC. They are also found in the Hindu temple at Prambanan in Java. The design is found on one of the silver plaques of the Late Roman hoard of Kaiseraugst (discovered 1961). It is later found as an ornament in Gothic architecture, and still later in European folk art of the early modern period.

High medieval examples include the Cosmati pavements in Westminster Abbey (13th century). Leonardo da Vinci explicitly discussed the mathematical proportions of the design.

Modern usage

19-circle with arcs
Pendant, silver, ⌀ 27 mm
(commercial product, 2013)

The pattern and modern name have propagated into wide range of usage in popular culture, in fashion, jewelry, tattoos and decorative products. The pattern in quilting has been called diamond wedding ring or triangle wedding ring to contrast it from the square pattern. Besides an occasional use in fashion, it is also used in the decorative arts. For example, the album Sempiternal (2013) by Bring Me the Horizon uses the 61 overlapping circles grid as the main feature of its album cover, whereas the album A Head Full of Dreams (2015) by Coldplay features the 19 overlapping circles grid as the central part of its album cover. Teaser posters illustrating the cover art to A Head Full of Dreams were widely displayed on the London Underground in the last week of October 2015.

The “Sun of the Alps” (Italian Sole delle Alpi) symbol has been used as the emblem of Padanian nationalism in northern Italy since the 1990s. It resembles a pattern often found in that area on buildings.

March 8, 2019
China Excursion
Hong Kong to Shenzhen

Epic is a word I’ve never used but is the only single word that begins to describe my China Excursion. It all started from Wan Chai in Hong Kong, with an early morning urban hike and photo shoot, to be the first to board the 7am vernacular tram ride known as Victoria Peak train.
During a recent business trip to Hong Kong I made a China Excursion on a 5 day visa to the Shenzhen economic zone, across the harbor from Hong Kong, I was interested to see the area nearest the border of the New Territory in what I think is the future Boca Raton of Shenzhen and tropical port town of Yantian.

Wutong Mountain is a rare natural scenic spot in China, which is located in urban area, with coastal mountains and natural vegetations as its main scenery. There are eight scenery blocks such as “Musical Instrument in Phoenix Valley”, “Wutong Clouds”, “A Phoenix Perching on the Green Wutong”, “East Lake Park” and “Fairy Lake Botanical Garden” etc. In 1993 it was awarded the title of National Park of Guangdong by the Guangdong Provincial Government. In December 2009, it was conferred the title of National Park of China by the State Council.

With range of green hills, Wutong Mountain rises gradually from west to east. There are three main peaks, namely Small Wutong, Bean Curd Head and Great Wutong, which are called “Three Towering Peaks” in history. With an attitude of 943.7 metres (3,096 ft), Great Wutong is the highest peak in Shenzhen. The majestic mountain reflects the vast Roc Bay and matches the cloud which changes irregularly. It connes Hong Kong with streams and mountains. Known far and wide, Wutong Mountain has a long history. “Wuling Heavenly Pound” had been praised as one of eight sceneries in Xin’an County in history. Now, “Wutong Clouds” has been listed as one of eight new sceneries of Shenzhen for its capricious and magic scenery.

Praised as “City Lung” vividly, vast vegetation of Wutong Mountain from the significant ecological barrier of Shenzhen. The forest coverage rate of Wutong Mountain reaches 88.6%. The types of vegetation in the mountain are multiple. South subtropics seasonal rainforest, mountainous orderly broad-leaf forest, hilltop dwarf forest, hilltop shrubs and glasses are distributed orderly from the foot to the top of the mountain. At present, such ecological sceneries as “Ten miles flowers of Rhododentron” and “Camellia flowers sea of Wutong” etc, which constructing according to the natural conditions of Wutong Mountain display striking “flower sea” sceneries.
November 28, 2018
Peace Plan

Peace

Peace is my mission! I asked for it and I got it.

In A Course in Miracles (acim) from the Foundation for Inner Peace, which is a course no-one can fail, I was taught the core value of peace, where to find it and how to obtain it, and make it happen within at will.

All of a sudden, one day, I had solved all my personal problems and then miracles started to happen, and now I can’t stop them, since my own happiness, is causing miracles to happen to other people too.

I’m not even 90 days into the course, very dedicated to the exercises I’ve been given, and already aware why it’s happening (my transformation). Also, I now know exactly how to continue making miracles happen, especially for other people, there’s no distinction in the size of them, or effect, once you learn the process it’s natural.

Everyone is entitled to miracles, without exception. Once you understand who and why, it all makes sense. It’s not the same for any two people but everyone who takes A Course in Miracles will experience an awakening of the inner mind, at some point, maybe earlier than me, or maybe it takes you 180 days. You won’t know, until you know, that you know.

Peace is the key. Peace is so powerful, in fact, that this weapon lays vastly unused and underappreciated, as a concept for improving humanity. The Foundation for Inner Peace has provided the world with the greatest self-help manual of all time. Now is the time go viral with the concept.

Peace and Love Declare War on Hate

Teaching is the best way to learn, they say. Today we will begin teaching A Course in Miracles and Search Engine Marketing, to make more miracles happen, we just add technology. Our peace plan is to raise the keyword density of the words peace and love.

When we realize how many people suffer needlessly, and how many multitudes more who suffer from war and conflict, which ACIM describes as a “separation from God” and group that ideology (war) and perpetrators together, as the enemy of peace and love, we have a formidable foe.

At first I was daunted by the size of my adversary and the notion that I could do anything to diminish this mountain of madness, however just because the task looks insurmountable doesn’t mean the mountain can’t be moved, with enough faith, practice, consistency and a method with metrics.

Since I’m a web publisher I decided to declare war on the mountain of madness and attack hatred, with peace and love. We are not selling anything and not here to make money. We will only render unto Google that which is Google’s BUT we will render unto the web, that which is Good!

November 12, 2018
Eleven, eleven, eleven

Esprit Science Metaphysiques

November Eleven, 2018 will be a particularly powerful day

Do you usually watch your phone or clock when it’s 11:11?

Do you see repeating sequences of figures all around you, whether on license plates or receipts?

This year in particular, countless people around the world have reported 11:11 on a daily basis.

It is becoming a global phenomenon as we approach the 11th day of the 11th month of an 11th universal year (2 + 0 + 1 + 8 = 11).

11:11:11 will unlock your personal event potential

In numerology, the 11 is a master number. This is the number of unique creation, authentic expression and quick manifestation.

It contains the pioneering ignition spark of the number 1 and the soothing, sensitive and psychic gifts of the number 2. In combination, the master number 11 keeps the vibration of the ascent.

If you look at the form of the number 11, it represents two pillars, a gateway, which opens a direct portal between the divine inspiration and the anchored manifestation.

On November 11, 2018, the portal 11:11:11 is wide open and is the most powerful gateway of the decade. Expect a rapid expansion of your personal power and abundance potential!

The slow power of 11:11 – Eleven Eleven

There is no doubt that 11:11 is a powerful message of divine guidance, inspiration and abundance. If you think back to the beginning of the year, you probably remember how powerful this feeling of potential was.

It should be known that, if the master numbers bring great opportunities, they are often accompanied by great challenges.

They demand control, time and patience. This could be the reason why the last 11 months have not been all sunny for you.

Fortunately, in numerology, we know that master numbers do not begin to express their highest and most revolutionary qualities until the second half of their cycle .

So for 2018, that means the last part of the year. In reality, they wait patiently for the moment to come before being born in greatness.

So, if 2018 was not easy for you, if you have not yet managed to manifest the ease, grace, and abundance you want, just be patient.

Your transformation is just beginning.

Everything that has happened so far is preparing something much, much bigger.
The period from October 31 to December 31 is considered a powerful gate of transformation, where the veil between the Earth and Spirit worlds is the thinnest.

It is very important not to rush during this time, not to lower your head and continue. This 11th universal year still has a magnificent job to do, and this time, its energy will be very powerful and trans-formative.

So, if 11:11 has appeared around you, this is the sign that you were waiting for!

See also: Do you constantly see 11:11? Here is what it means ..

The time has come to harness the slow pace of this triple master number to manifest great spiritual growth and abundance in your life.

November 11, 2018
Bob Marley Movement of Jah People

To have a music category here on Silicon Palms and not mention Bob Marley, would be a massive mistake and an error by omission, since he’s the most important musician of my life. No other artist has touched me in the same way, and I don’t feel as though my appreciation of reggae and Bob Marley lyrics is overzealous. No other artist or rock star effected me in the same way, from an early age I started questioning the authority figures in our world and thinking about the truth of his words. Especially the verse about freeing ourselves from mental slavery….

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
‘Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look? Ooh
Some say it’s just a part of it
We’ve got to fulfill the Book

~ from Redemption Song by Bob Marley

It seems rather odd that a white middle class teenager would have had struggles with to compare with a poor black man living in a ghetto of Kingston, Jamaica called Trenchtown. I am still reminded of some of the hardest days of my life, when I hear Bob Marley my memory can recall the time I lived in the Arctic in Northern Canada. When I was a teenager I was lured away by the prospect of earning money in the oilfields of the far north and decided to quit high school to go chase after my fortune. The Alaska highway was the road that led to the oil and gas line construction and when I was 18 I found myself in a dead-end job, working full-time at first then the company downsized and put laborers on part-time. To make matters worse I experienced violence in a bar-fight, plus had a run-in with the cops and was charged with possession of marijuana. Not a great start to adulthood.

During the hard times of my teenage trials and tribulations in the great white north of BC, I missed the first family Christmas of my life, was subsisting on part time work, had been charged with a misdemeanor crime while stuck living in the northern-most town in British Columbia, where the average outdoor temperature during winter was about 20 below zero. A amazing things happened, that would only be evident as significant to my growth to me, many years later. First I found a friend that introduced me to martial arts and Bob Marley, he’d listen to the music and teach me stretching for karate and techniques of jujitsu while listening to the same couple of albums, over and over. His passion was explaining the lyrics of Bob Marley and describing the styles of Benny the Jet, or Chuck Norris (who he resembled), as they were early MMA (mixed martial arts) champions, back in the 1970’s and early 80’s.

[box size=”large” style=”rounded” border=”full”]My spare time during a long winter, living down-n-out, inside the frozen arctic circle, was filled with an eclectic combo of Reggae and MMA.[/box]

At the time I didn’t understand the true meaning of Bob Marley’s music but I was hooked on his vibration, right from the first beat. My winter of discontent ended and I drove my pickup truck back down south, close to the U.S. border, where I spent the most adventure filled, hot summer. A couple of decades later I would become the webmaster for the Bob Marley Movement, which was an online fan club that had spawned from the actual, original; “Bob Marley Movement of Jah People” (fan club), started by Bob himself. Yep, I was working directly with the family, including his mother and brother. I visited many times, the house where Bob Marley lived in Miami. Working for Bob Marley was the most satisfying job of my life because by mid to late 30’s I’d seen enough of the world and Bob Marley’s influence on it, via his pop-culture icon everywhere I traveled. Plus, by this time in my life, the meaning to his songs had sunk in.

To this day, I feel the Rasta man vibration.

Photo credit: Matthew Cachia on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC

March 2, 2018
Digital Money and Cryptocurrency are Related by Birth

I will never forget the first time I saw digital money, it was in about 1978 in West Vancouver at Park Royal Shopping center. Being old enough to drive, I remember taking my cousin’s girlfriend to her bank. I pulled up to the curb near the bank front door, beside which was the first ATM (automated teller machine) I had ever seen. From my car I watched this smart young women walk up to the cash machine (instead of through the bank doors like normal people), then pull out a bank card, slide it in a slot, type in a series of numbers on a keypad and “zap!” out of the machine pops crisp new $20 dollar bills. I was so impressed and knew that I had to have one too, as did every person given the choice.

[box size=”large” style=”rounded” border=”full”]Now it’s taken for granted but it wasn’t long ago that plastic became more common than paper (money).[/box]

Digital money has been around for a very long time, we just didn’t know it because it was not something anyone questioned until after the big crash, renamed as the 2008 Financial Crisis. After the entire world’s economy was damaged, by the contagion from the financial crimes that caused the problem, we learned that the underlying cause of the financial crisis was a combination of debt and mortgage-backed assets.

[box type=”info” style=”rounded” border=”full”]The 2008 financial crisis was the largest and most severe financial event since the Great Depression and reshaped the world of finance and investment banking. The effects are still being felt today.[/box]

The common man learned from the aftermath of the 2008 Financial Crisis that debt had amassed to a critical level and some institutions would need to be bailed out. One only needs to look at the U.S. Debt Clock (see: http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ) to know that the numbers have compounded negatively and are spiraling out of control. To date the money being used by people all over the world appears to be holding it’s value, although everyone knows they buy less and less over time but certainly not hyper-inflation.

This entire Ponzi scheme called the Federal Reserve Banking system, is based on digital money, it’s an electronically calculated mathematics experiment gone horribly wrong and there’s no way to put the genie back in the bottle, or to contain the contagion of the next financial crisis, which is already overdue. Most all of the banks and institutions that were previously bailed-out, are once again in crisis mode, worse now in terms of cash deposits on hand, compared to the balance sheet of the bank. This time everyone knows there won’t be another massive bailout, the question is when is the next crash, and which institution is going to cause it to happen?

Along comes cryptocurrency, born of another digital money experiment. This time the conception was by computer software programmers and encryption geeks, hence the name crypto. This time the idea was to create a decentralized, hack-proof, simple and easy to use, pier-to-pier, electronic currency sharing system, and the mathematical equations to give it life.

Bitcoin had a 4 year gestation period where anonymous programmers shared the idea with computer programming enthusiasts, and for sheer pleasure, this new social experiment grew large among a crowd of geeks, who had no interest in financial gain from the concept. It was these 4 or so years that enabled the actual value to become apparent to a capitalist, even then it was not a runaway success from the start.

[box type=”info” style=”rounded” border=”full”]Bitcoin and all cryptocurrency are related to Digital Money in one major way: The need to use a bank card, chip, QR code, or some type of numerical signature, to access your account balance.[/box]

Young people today, often referred to as Millennial’s, are much more inclined to invest in cryptocurrency than a stock, bond or gold bar. Millennial’s actually have more confidence in Bitcoin than they do in government issued paper money. Eventually most paper money will become obsolete, look around it’s already happening.

Cryptocurrency Photo credit: Daveography.ca on Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-SA

March 1, 2018
Brilliant Artificial Intelligence of “I write like”
Finding relations using statistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

Not exactly sure how I found the website “I write like” but from the first moment I was mesmerized by the system. A simple idea in theory but very complicated in application. It’s a good example of where Artificial Intelligence (AI) has found a perfect application, to rapidly analyze language patterns, then make comparison of your writing style, to one of the more than 50 famous authors.

The other thing that’s very compelling about the “I write Like” website is the list of famous authors. Extra bonus is that you can learn about great new writers because the current list of 50 are very diverse, some of whom you likely will not have heard of, this will encourage more follow-up.

A great list of interesting writers, accompanied by thumb-nails of the Amazon linked books they’ve written. For example, my second and third random test of my writing (from this blog) returned the same result twice, that of a living legend, author, blog writer named Cory Doctorow.

I Write Like

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I Write Like

Owner Dmitry Chestnykh, Coding Robots

Website http://iwl.me/

Alexa rank 95,533

Launched July 9, 2010

Current status Active

I Write Like is a website created by Russian software programmer Dmitry Chestnykh, founder of software company Coding Robots. The site analyzes users’ writing samples and, by looking for certain keywords, vocabulary, and style via a naive Bayes classifier returns the name of a popular writer the sample most closely resembles. It was launched on July 9, 2010 and, according to reports, has gone viral, getting over 100,000 visitors on July 13, 2010 and spreading quickly across other blogs and popular social-networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

According to the Toronto Star, the website’s popularity soared as a result of a series of rants made by actor Mel Gibson; New York City-based blog Gawker submitted transcripts of Gibson’s rants to find that the site website compared them to writings by Canadian writer and feminist Margaret Atwood. Film critic Roger Ebert tried the site and said on a tweet that “I Write Like thinks I write like Margaret Atwood, she writes like H. P. Lovecraft, and he writes like James Joyce“. The Star also reported the result that Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty‘s Children’s hospital in Ottawa celebrates big expansion closely resembles Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The Guardian reported that Atwood herself tried out the website, and it said that her writing resembles that of novelist Stephen King in one attempt and like Joyce on another try. William Gibson also tried the site, which said his writing resembles that of Vladimir Nabokov. A transcript of a speech made by U.S. President Barack Obama in June 2010 has been compared to author David Foster Wallace, while the lyrics to Lady Gaga‘s song “Alejandro” have been compared to William Shakespeare. Other bloggers, including author Teresa Nielsen Hayden, have expressed anger and frustration to find that the website has compared their writings to that by The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown. Despite the website’s early success, Chestnykh was cautious to say that its accuracy still needs improvement, as he has only been able to upload “a few books by some 50 different authors” into its database. He says that he intends to include advanced features such as “probability percentages” that a user-submitted passage resembles a certain author.

Below are the words copied from the About-page at “I write Like” official website:

[hr]

I Write Like checks which famous writer you write like by analyzing your word choice and writing style and comparing them with those of the famous writers. Analyze your text

How does it work?

The algorithm pretty simple, and you can find it on every computer today. It’s a Bayesian classifier, which is widely used to fight spam on the Internet. Take for example the “Mark as spam” button in Gmail or Outlook. When you receive a message that you think is spam, you click this button, and the internal database gets trained to recognize future messages similar to this one as spam. This is basically how “I Write Like” works on my side: I feed it with “Frankenstein” and tell it, “This is Mary Shelley. Recognize works similar to this as Mary Shelley.” Of course, the algorithm is slightly different from the one used to detect spam, because it takes into account more stylistic features of the text, such as the number of words in sentences, the number of commas, semicolons, and whether the sentence is a direct speech or a quotation.

Do you want to learn more?
- Read interview with the author.
- Check out Wikipedia page about this site.
It’s open source!

We published our source code for everyone to review or reuse.

Is it correct?

It depends on your views on writing style. Certainly, you can’t rely on our analysis 100%. Try it and decide for yourself.

Brilliant Artificial Intelligence photo credit: DigitalMajority on Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-SA
February 28, 2018
Scott Adams the Dilbert Creator on Trump

One of the great inspiration for me lately was finding out about Scott Adams, the cartoon artist and creator of Dilbert. Not only is his cartoon excellent but he’s on a great youtube channel where he expounds about the persuasion techniques that President Trump is using in his speeches and tweet storms etc…

Scott Adams was predicting a Trump victory from early on because, as he explains, he had a unique qualification to understand the way main-stream America responds to powerful persuasion techniques that Donald Trump has mastered and uses to his advantage daily.

Scott Adams has invented a creative signature idiosyncrasy of his Youtube videos is what he calls the “simultaneous sip”, where he hoists up his extra-large coffee cup and takes a big sip, supposedly at the same time as all the viewers at home, hence almost each show he prompts us to take a sip of beverage, at the same time as he does. Listening to Scott Adams explain the clever tactics of persuasion techniques, was how I came across the book by him called “How to Fail at almost everything and still succeed”.

Click to read the back of the book

Fair enough to say that I have read and chuckled at Dilbert cartoons for as many years as they’ve been syndicated. The key to Dilbert is that it appeals to real people, working in real jobs in the real world. The masses can relate to Dilbert and people like to dislike the Boss, wherever they happen to work, it’s a normal thing for people to joke about the ineptitude of the company-life managers and the office world. This gives Scott Adams an interesting perspective, also because the cartoons are short and need to be blunt, he’s become an expert in expressing ideas in very short sentences and delivers a punch-line.

Having listened to Scott Adams speak in front of a crowd to promote his book “How to Fail at almost everything and still succeed” I was very impressed to learn about his determined life story and how he persisted until he found success as the Dilbert creator, however hearing him deliver a seminar convinced me that he would succeed at “something”, as he is very smart.

Once I heard him mention that he was a member of Mensa since he was interested to have his IQ tested (at a moment of self-doubt) and anyone can perform the IQ test, so he discovered he’s in the top 2%. This higher intelligence helps Adams to articulate himself in a very concise way, to explain how he sees incredible techniques of persuasion in Trump.

[box]Membership of Mensa is open to persons who have attained a score within the upper two percent of the general population on an approved intelligence test that has been properly administered and supervised.[/box]

Dilbert Photo credit: Ol.v!er [H2vPk] on VisualHunt / CC BY

February 27, 2018
Practicing mindfulness and meditation

A friend gave me a horoscope reading for my birthday and in it it said, that I would be giving up social life in favor of meditation and reflection. Also, that purple was my color for this year and amethyst crystal my stone, a couple other details which I’ve forgotten but the notion of my becoming anti-social was interesting to me, as I’ve found myself increasingly by myself and rarely lonely. I started noticing the changes several years ago, enjoying my own company more an more and socializing less and less. I was practicing mindfulness and meditation.

There’s just so much information to keep up with and so much classic literature yet to read, plus the pace of learning now with so much video and multi-tasking by listening to information while scanning through data, it tunes the brain to work right along with the software tools. Computers and software are so advanced today, that learning and working in information technology is so exciting that it’s fun to wake up in the morning knowing so much has changed during a seven hour absence and anxious to get back online. However, there needs to be balance….

In order to balance the obsessive nature of my online information compulsion, I’ve had to put systems in place to control my Internet OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and these include exercise and time each day spent in nature and time spent in meditation. As each day passes, I’ve come to realize that the time spent in meditation needs to increase and the time spent online needs to decrease, this is much easier said than done. Old habits are hard to break but I knew that to improve my happiness quotient it had to happen, so I decided to make it happen.

The editorial plan is to drive hope, love and purpose by sharing ideas and information about the opportunities and projects, that I see on a daily basis. My mission with this blog was to practice writing each day, as a commitment towards becoming a better writer and more natural story teller. There’s stuff I’d like to write about and so much visual material I’d like to share but the most important thing, is if my words can inspire someone to make a plan, to think it through and to take action. To just win a smile, or share a thought with someone across the world.

February 26, 2018