Curious about what your estimated life expectancy is? Well, now there is a tool to give you a rough guess. It is called the Vitality Compass and can be found on the Blue Zones website. Founded by Dan Buettner who is also author of the best selling book of the same title, Blue Zones is your all around guide for longevity. After answering a approximately 20 question survey, I was informed that according to the tool I will have a life expectancy of 87.6 years, and if I change a couple lifestyle habits I could add on an extra 8.9 years. It is difficult to take these numbers too much to heart but after reading the book I do know that there is a great wealth of knowledge and research that has gone into the brains behind this simple calculator.
Please note that you will need to quickly make a user to perform the calculation.
Independent thinking is crucial in all aspects of life and can be related to some of the hot issues of today: journalism, politics, dietary choices, marriage rights, the list can go on forever.
Throughout my adult life I have striven and have gravitated towards those who embrace the idea of independent thinking. Allow me to flesh out a definition of sorts of how I view independent thinking. When a person holds a concept or worldview on how they understand a specific topic and is presented with new facts that would justify changing, modifying, or a complete 180-degree reversal of their viewpoint they would fully embrace it. In turn they will wish to dig further into the subject matter and try to see where they had gone wrong and how they can build off this new perspective. It is in this way that we progress as a people.
I have seen much hard-headedness throughout my young adult career and am completely amazed by the unwillingness of some to even consider a conflicting view. In some cases, there has even been a trend towards embarrassing practice of belittling opposition viewpoints in tasteless manners. This mentality has been accelerated by news networks that are anything but fair and balanced. This is not entirely a cut on Fox news but many news outlets in general. News programs should set out to report all of the facts from all sides and let the viewers decide which makes the most sense. Respect for the dissenting view is vitally important as well and is a justification for free speech. It is crucial that we allow dissenting viewpoints to be heard so that mainstream group-think does not get too out of control in any direction.
I encourage myself continually to not form hard and fast opinions on issues and do not like to lump myself into any particular group. Dale Carnegie once wrote that we are wrong about 50% of the time. Learning to accept your inability to be right all of the time and the complexity of issues will shield you from face-saving battles that will ensue once your are proven wrong the other half of the time.
Progress can only be made through improvement of our thought systems and being stubborn will only hold us back.
This evening while sitting in a comfy armchair pleasantly enjoying a light book I couldn’t help but overhear the local evening news. Swine Flu (cue apocalyptic music). I couldn’t believe it. Not only did they have to report on every latest update but the coverage lasted almost the entire program. We have a serious media problem in this county in that there seems to be the need to sensationalize everything. Lets face the facts. According to estimates from the Center for Disease Control 36,000 people die each year from just your plain old influenza.
That number again: 36,000
Why is it that although we have only seen one single death in the US from this newly reported strain of Swine Flu, we feel the need to waste whole entire broadcasts about it. Even some of the language and material they show would lead the average citizen to think that the situation is much worse than it really is. It is almost like they want to scare us.
My message to my state news: tell us the realistic truth about the situation and then move on with the rest of the news and quit sensationalizing everything, we have enough of that already in the movies.
I wish first to put the quote from the Black Swan, by NassimTaleb, which has been so influential to me:
“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with ‘Wow! Signore professoredottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?’ and others – a very small minority- who get the point that a private library is not an ego boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call the collection of unread books an antilibrary.”
I have to say that this passage has made a profound impact on my life and has inspired me to begin collecting books, some of which are beyond my current ability to read. Amazon.com, eat your heart out. Of course, I do have the good fortune of having a amazing library system in my city that provides an endless supply of books, but it is the ability to spontaneously pick up a book and dive in that warrants having a collection of your own as well. Personal favorites of mine, which I intend to add more of, are books written in foreign languages. For example, I have been eyeing up books published in original Russian or Arabic for some time. Having these novels on my bookshelf will give me extra determination to study these languages, and incentives are extremely important for bolstering continual motivation.
Here are a couple books that I have purchased over the last couple months to add to my antilibrary. What have you added to yours lately?
If you have been following the news this morning you may have heard about the “photo opp” that was approved by the White House Military Office. The genius location for this flight? Manhattan! Hum, I wonder if that is such a bright idea. Supposedly, this task was so poorly planned out that the mayor of NYC, Bloomberg, didn’t even know about it.
The result: panic in some areas of the city. This comes at no surprise given the fear and still lingering feeling about what happened on 9/11. Many are calling for the resignation of the head of the WHMO, Louis Caldera, who approved the mission. I would have to agree. If someone that has that much power doesn’t have the judgment to realize the reactions of New Yorkers and Americans alike he shouldn’t be in office. Below I have included the Youtube video that covers the flight.
A novel by Dostoyevsky, one of my favorite authors, is the feature for this weeks book recommendation. Titled Notes from Underground, the author takes you into the mind of a confused individual that cannot seem to help but contradict himself around every turn. At only 140 pages (in my edition) Notes from Underground is a wonderful introduction to the author if you have never had the privilege of reading his works before and do not want to have to commit to starting one of his larger novels. Although, if you are not new to Dostoyevsky you enjoy it all the same as the physiological aspect of this book reminds me of the excitement of one of his best books, Crime and Punishment.
This story takes part in two very discernable parts. In the first potion, Dostoyevsky delves into deep philosophical discussion through the thoughts of his main character; addressing matters such as free will. He wittingly pulls you onto a point only to have his protagonist laugh at his conclusions and make attempts to refute or change direction. The second half of the novella takes you into a couple days in the life of our underground dweller, his attitudes towards situations, and his mental struggles in dealing with his daily life.
I enjoyed reading Notes from Underground thoroughly and I recommend to first time readers of Dostoevsky and fans alike.
Buena Vista Social Club is a legendary movie. This feature is packed full of great music and gives you a rare look into the lives of the Cuban musicians that make up the musical group. I have been wanting to watch this movie for some time and through my random browsing of Hulu today I finally got the chance. If you haven’t used or heard of Hulu yet and haven’t seen this movie, do it now! It is a great musical experience and it’s free to see right now. Click the link below to go directly to the film.
If you are like me then you have accumulated quite a few programs that load on start-up. I noticed recently that the amount of time it takes to turn on my computer and have it ready to use has increased dramatically from when I first bought the computer so I decided to go in and change the settings. Now, I believe there are programs to assist in doing this but if you don’t want to install yet another program all you need to do is the following.
Start -> Run
Then in Run menu type msconfig. This will give you a menu that should look like the screen below. Once you have this up it is just a matter of clicking on the start-up tab and checking or in this case unchecking the programs you don’t want to run on start-up. CAUTION: do not uncheck important programs like system files unless you know what you are doing. I only unchecked programs like skype and msn messanger and didn’t mess with anything I was even unsure about.
The idea has been expressed in countless ways over the years; that the joy is in the journey and not the destination. Dostoyevsky addressed it eloquently in his own way in the following passage:
“Granted that man does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses oceans, sacrifices his life in the quest, but to succeed, really to find it, he dreads, I assure you. He feels that when he has found it there will be nothing for him to look for.”
“Sunlight’s ultimate goal is to strengthen the relationship between citizens and their elected officials and to foster public trust in Congress.” Sounds pretty good huh And there method of attack – “We are unique in that technology and the power of the Internet are at the core of every one of our efforts.” Perfect, right down my ally. It was on my drive home today that I heard about Sunlight Foundation on NPR and when they mentioned some of the apps that they had recently given prizes to on their Apps for America contest I thought I would check them out.
On their contests page I found a list of the top applications and I discovered that although, not the first place winner, the Know thy Congressman app appeared to be the most useful. After installing the application in your favorites bar, you simply highlight any politicians name and click back up on the newly created link. KTC then displays for you a pop up floating box of basic information about this person such as number, website, bills co-sponsored, news articles mentioning them, and top 5 contributing groups. I find this application to be the most useful because you can at any point on your daily reading of the news look up one of the politicians mentioned and learn a little bit more about them.
Awareness projects such as these may help keep people informed and also provide the much needed transparency to what our elected officials are doing. So go ahead, play around with these savvy apps and let’s be the watchers of the watchmen.
"...you have to stop and drift laterally for a while until you come across something that allows you to expand the roots of what you already know." -Robert M. Pirsig
