Podcasts I listen to

For the last couple of years I've been listening a lot of podcasts, and some of them I still listen to as soon as they have a new episode. Once you get up to a few hours of newly produced podcasts per week you have to find every possible time you can to listen to them. The time it takes to walk, bike or commute somewhere is great. I usually put my headphones on as soon as I go out alone, or if working on my own on something mundane like laundry or dishes. Listening while working is pointless since I either stop writing code, or stop listening. The podcasts listed below all demand full focus from the listener if you are to learn anything from them.

Digital Planet
Digital Planet from BBC is an easy going technology podcast that will discuss the latest general news in the IT area. Usually quite short and not very technical, but a good news update anyway.

In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg
This is another high quality BBC podcast, but it is quite "high brow" compared to Digital Planet and very broad in it's content. The episodes usually consist of a small group of British professors, together with the fast speaking host Melwyn Bragg, talking for an hour about anything from quantum mechanics to philosophy, or some major historic event. Very educating, but not a podcast to listen to when you are tired.

Linux Outlaws
Linux Outlaws is produced by Dan and Fab and is a humorous show about all kinds of Linux related news. It's lighthearted and I usually laugh out loud several times per episode. It is a fun way to keep updated on new releases (System Rescue CD?) and other Linux community information. The typical discussions usually include something like this:
Fab - "It's crap! I'll cut their balls off!"
Dan - "Yeah, let's keep an eye on that! Hmm, ok, lets move on then shall we."

LinuxLink Radio
LinuxLink Radio is a podcast about embedded Linux development produced by TimeSys. It is a highly technical show and usually each episode goes through a solution to a specific problem that you might run into when working with embedded Linux devices. Very informative and a news update on the embedded world.

SALT - Seminars About Long Term Thinking
The Long Now Foundation invite some great speakers and they always have very interesting speakers. The podcasts are usually over an hour and usually start with Stuart Brand introducing the speaker and topic of the evening. Unfortunately some presentations are a bit too image focused and because of that hard to follow as a podcast. At the end of each presentation Kevin Kelly asks the questions collected from the audience during the presentation. The shows are not that many, and they are all worth listening to. They will make you think about time with a different perspective.

Science Talk - The Podcast of Scientific American
This podcast is closely connected to the Scientific American magazine and usually discuss the articles comming in the next paper issue with the author of each article. My favorite part every week is the bogus news quiz where they list four strange news stories and you have to guess which one is false.

Software Engineering Radio - The podcast for professional software developers
If deep and highly technical podcasts about software development suits your taste, this is your podcast. Sometimes it might feel a bit too abstract or a very narrow topic, but you will defenitely learn a lot. There's quite a big archive over at the SE-radio site.

The Java Posse
Java Posse is one of the longest running podcasts I listen to and currently they're at episode number 276! Tor Norbye, Carl Quinn, Dick Wall and Joe Nuxol do the talking and the episodes vary from recordings of discussion panels and interviews, to theme episodes and pure news updates. The tone is cheerful and full of jokes and not always on topic, but that's a good thing.

This American Life
If you like long detailed stories, this is the podcast for you. The show consists of one or more interviews per episode about a certain type of life changing event. A high quality production.

Three Moves Ahead
This is a strategy gaming podcast from Flash of steel where Troy Goodfellow, Tom Chick, Bruce Geryk and Julian Murdoch discuss boardgames and computer strategy games. There's a lot of "in-jokes" and references to old games and the tone is very casual. Even if I'm not much of a gamer any more, it's still interesting to stay up to date on what is happening in that area.

WNYC's Radio Lab
This extremely well produced podcast from WNYC is hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich. They talk about a wide variety of scientific subjects and use a lot of sound effects and music. It is a podcast suitable to everyone since the language used is very clear and the topics are all interesting.

Word of Mouth
This is the podcast version of the long running Word of Mouth radio show from NHPR. It feels more like a normal radio show than a typical podcast and have a good mix of quick news and deep interviews.

I gladly recommend all the podcasts mentioned above and they are worth every minute it takes to listen to them.

Zeitgeist: Addendum

Zeitgeist: The Movie was by far my favorite “provocative documentary” of 2007, and a month ago a new movie by the same team called Zeitgeist: Addendum was released.

I'd say that this new movie is less provocative and more informative and inspiring than the first one. The topics are still the same, that the banks control the world more than you think, the war on terror is a scam and that religion is just one of many ways to keep the general public from asking too many questions.

Chapter I (0:06:45)

The first fifteen minutes gives a good introduction to the monetary system that controls the world we live in today. The movie goes through how loans and debt is involved in the creation of money and how much power the banks get because of this and makes it clear how the fractional reserve system of monetary expansion gives rise to more inflation. According to the director Peter Joseph, The Federal Reserve is the main culprit behind all of this and the whole purpose is to transfer true wealth from individuals to the banks. It's a system of modern slavery because with the current system, society will never be debt free since the money needed to repay interest on loans can only be created by even more debt.

Chapter II (0:25:10)

This part starts with a very interesting interview with John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. The quote shown in the intro of this chapter describes it very well:

There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation.
One is by the sword. The other is by debt.

- John Adams (1735-1826)

The movie shows how often economic threats, corruption and sabotage is used instead of a flat out physical war, mostly because it is way cheaper and much less visible. The later part of the chapter discuss another US favorite topic, terrorism, and what it is really all about.

Chapter III (0:54:25)

Chapter three of the movie is a long interview with Jacque Fresco of the The Venus Project, extended with commented short video clips. This 92 year old man is looks much younger than he is, and he clearly describes what the Venus Project is all about.

Basically they want to totally redesign our whole culture to be more ethical and humane. The only way to do this, according to Jacque Fresco, is through technology and social awareness. Money, politics and religion are described as false institutions since they can not change the current system. The profit based society we currently have will never be sustainable or efficient because scarcity is the only way to keep the profits high.

Chapter IV (1:32:42)

The last chapter starts with a description of emergence and begs you to challenge your current belief system and become more aware. They ask for intelligent management of the earths resources in a way that can't be done in a monetary system. The later parts of the chapter gives some suggestions of how to combat this monetary system using technology available to us right now. The points listed for moving towards this goal is:

1. Expose the banking fraud by boycotting the banks behind it.
2. Boycott the TV news networks and use the internet instead.
3. Don't ever join the military. Ever.
   
4. Boycott the energy companies and use renewable energy instead.
5. Reject the political system and focus on technology.
6. Join the Zeitgeist Movement for social change.
   

The movie ends with a scene where people stand in a blurry Manhattan intersection and think of what they are doing with their life, and realizing that they have to do something about it.

Watch it!

The two hour long Zeitgeist: Addendum movie is packed full of information that will make you think. Even if you don't agree with everything in the movie, you should be provoked enough to question the current structure of our society. The movie is somewhat US-centric, but the implications are still global. Please don't stay ignorant, visit http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com right now and let everyone you know hear about it!

I, for one, await March 15th 2009...

Einstein quote

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms-it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.

-Albert Einstein, The world as I see it

Lies

For some strange reason studies of liars seem to pop up all over the net right now. NYmag has a long and very interesting article about why kids lie and how they learn it from their parents. Kids start as early as age 2 or 3, and the smarter the kid the earlier they start lying. Telling the truth is easy, but making a believable lie takes a lot more effort.

The always excellent Radiolab had a show last week about lies where they presented the results from several studies on the subject. They interviewed the famous psychologist Paul Ekman about facial expressions and how to tell if people are lying. The whole concept of microexpressions is fascinating. And Ekman's vow he took when his daughter was born to never lie again seems incredibly difficult to keep.

Another part of the program discusses a study Yaling Yang did on pathological liars. Brain scans of them showed that they had a lot more white brain matter in their prefrontal cortex compared to the control group, but less gray matter. The researchers believed that the huge increase in connections in the brain made lying practically effortless for these individuals and they could reply instantly with a plausible lie.

The radio show continues with a segment about a con-woman called Hope and how she used unsuspicious people by constantly lying.

People who are good at lying are generally more happy and have greater success in life. People with serious depressions are "too realistic" and seem unable to twist the truth into a brighter version. Being able to lie to yourself as well as others have many advantages even when you don't abuse it to the fullest.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to interact with people and even more observing what people do and how they react. If I had no moral or empathy there's no limit to how much I could take advantage of peoples good will. Most people want to help and trust other peoples "good nature", but I'm afraid there's too many who don't have that in them. I'll be sure to keep my eyes open for the slightest "leakage", be it a microexpression or an inconsistency in the story. Just never let people know you caught them lying, that just makes them more careful next time and harder to catch.

This cynical post is written while listening to Billy Talent - Lies

Memory and learning

I've been thinking a lot about learning and memory lately and there's been no shortage of interesting articles to read or videos to watch.

Over at wondr.net Jamin has started his Memory Month. He posts a new article every day, teaching you useful tricks for remembering everything from shopping lists and numbers to names of people you've just met. These methods will probably work great, but I'm to lazy to really sit down and do it since there's so many other things distracting me right now.

I don't believe in the old myth that humans only use 10% of the brain, but I do believe that there's a lot about the brain we don't understand at all yet, and maybe we never will. At Google Video they have some very interesting documentaries regarding the brain, for instance this documentary from Channel 5 in 2005 about Daniel Tammet or this one about Kim Peek. These savants have enormous counting skills huge memory capacities, but the brain power comes at a price. From mild autistic tendencies like Asperger's to completely anti-social autistic behavior.

It's been noted that these types of disorders are getting more and more common, especially in academic families and it's even been called The Geek Syndrome by Wired. The latest studies says that something between 3 and 20 genes are involved in causing these disorders. Incidentally this also seems to affect maths and science skills in a positive way. Abnormalities in the cerebellum, the "little brain" responsible for motor control and filtering sensory input and passing it on to the right part of the brain, is common in autistic persons. Kim Peek for instance, has a damaged cerebellum and no corpus callosum, the connection between the two halves of the brain, at all.

The brain is a pattern matching machine and it seems to me like it's automatically filtering the continuous flow of information washing over us, but if it's not filtered enough the person might be classified as slightly autistic. If the brain filters too much, parts of it just doesn't get used enough and will dwindle away. Of course this is an overly simple way of looking at it, but I'm certain it's a part of the puzzle.

I'm also convinced that the brain is a lot more flexible than people used to believe, even in grown ups. New born babies have twice the number of nerve cells they need, but the ones that aren't used just dies off. Usually this happens in two periods, first at a young age, then again around puberty. But the brain is not "frozen" after that at all. A recent study on mice shows that the nerve cells move around and stretch "in a highly dynamic fashion".

It's never too late to learn something new, but I think it's harder to really focus on learning just one thing when you're grown up compared to when you're still a kid. There's just too many things to think about and too many distractions, and so much interesting to learn.

Wish I didn't have to sleep so much, but a completely unscientific experiment on myself made me notice that when I sleep less then 6 hours per night, my memory isn't as good as it usually is. Things just don't stick. Also, I've noticed that I remember things I read in the evening better than the things I read in the morning. I imagine that my brain is working through the input from the day while sleeping, trying to keep only the seemingly important memories.

It's getting late, I'll go read a book.

Update: Great article about memory in National Geographic

NerdTests.com

I remember doing this nerd test in 2005 and got the following result:

Noticed on a blog that they had a new version of the test and of course I had to take it. The questions are funny and after answering them as honestly as I could I got:

Hmm... Not sure what to say about the score, but at least I'm not a dumb awkward dork. :-)

Crazy watches and passing time

This is without doubt one of the most interesting articles I've read in a long time. It's about a japanese watch maker called Haruo Suekichi (Japanese homepage only), who designs odd and unique contraptions that show time. Some of them look barely wearable, but they're all still really cool.

The interviewer also asks how he looks at the passing of time and I think he had a great definition of it:

The progress of time and memories are like a path you go along, and certain memories stand out as markers...that's kind of how I think of time, I guess, how I look at time...

I'm so used to looking at time from a scientific point of view (I blame Brian Greene for that) so this article felt really refreshing to read. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to express thing in a more poetic way.

Zeitgeist - Realize the truth

Who doesn't love a good conspiracy theory? This Zeitgeist movie, cut into three separate videos are all highly interesting and thought provoking. A comprehensive list of source material can be found here and the public statement he's trying to make is here.

The Greatest Story Ever Told (26:20 minutes)

The program shows Jesus as being the same old Sun God that people have worshiped for ages. That the stories in the Bible are incredibly similar to the stories of other older religions. Of course people borrow ideas and stories from things they've heard or read before, but the similarities shown are astounding. I'd say it's a very valid analysis of religion and how to make one.

All The World's A Stage (33:24 minutes)

This movie is scary and highly provocative. Basically it says that 9/11 was performed by the US government to increase it's own power. It shows exactly how many coincidences that had to happen at the precise time for this "terrorist attack" to be as devastating as it was. T

Don't mind the men behind the curtain (47:05 minutes)

I've read articles concerning this before, but the presentation here is exceptional and worth a careful view. It shows just how much power the international bankers have and how that the economy of a country is so totally in control of the Central bank. The Central bank controls the interest rates and the inflation, constantly loaning money to the government with an interest. The bank also regulates the value of the currency by increasing or decreasing the amount of money being printed. The focus is on the American Federal Reserve and it's tight ties to the major banking families in the US. The Wall street crash of 1929 is described as biggest robbery of all time. I'm highly surprised that The Fed is privately owned and that they wanted USA to join the WW I, the WW II and the Vietnam war to earn even more money. And with a pointer to the second video, the American governments War on Terrorism is the same thing all over again. According to the movie it's all a huge money scam.

The last 20 minutes describes an intricate plan to come to a point in the future where we have a "One world government". It's somewhat of a doomsday scenario, and a scary one indeed. A good background to have in regard to the power of media is to watch Outfoxed. Who are all these "men behind the curtain"?

As the statement said, the whole purpose of these videos is to act as an eye opener for people to look more critically at the world around us. I've always thought I've tried to look at the world from all angles but these films really act as a cold shower wake up. I guess the end comment in the statement sums it up perfectly:

"It is my hope that people will not take what is said in the film as the truth, but find out for themselves, for truth is not told, it is realized."

Time for all of us to realize.

(Updated links to the correct Google Video)

Altruism, empathy and morality

Recent research shows that when you do something totally unselfish, the same regions in the brain that responds to food or sex lights up. The study, originally published in October 2006 by Jorge Moll and Jordan Grafman, got a lot of publicity in the press lately. Some good summaries could be found in the Washington Post and Science Daily, and also in some blogs from people interested in this topic.

My personal uneducated take on altruism is that I know it feels good. My brain rewards me when I help someone, when I make someone else happy. The evolutionary benefit from this is a bit harder to pinpoint, but the articles mentioned above has some good theories. Scott Huettel draws the following conclusions from his study:

"Our findings are consistent with a theory that some aspects of altruism arose out of a system for perceiving the intentions and goals of others."

and

"To be altruistic, you need to see that the people you’re helping have goals, and that your actions will have consequences for them."

The also studies show that people with damage to a specific part of the frontal lobe lacked empathy and would solve tricky emotional problems in a cold "the-end-justifies-the-means" way. This sounds a lot like Asperger's syndrome to me. Now every other kid with a slight communication problem seems to get this diagnose, but I wouldn't be surprised if this condition has something to do with them having a slight error in parts of their frontal lobe.

Marc Hauser has done psychological experiments showing that people all over the world process moral questions in the same way, suggesting that moral thinking is intrinsic to the human brain, rather than a product of culture. That morality is comparable to language in the way that they are both intrinsic in humans. He suggests that people reach moral conclusions in the same way they construct a sentence without having been trained in linguistics. A quote from this excellent summary of a Nature article:

Thus, the findings confirm the notion that there are at least two neural systems involved in making moral decisions: one in which emotions are involved, and one which performs a cost-benefit analysis. [... ...] It is believed that the emotion-based system for making moral decisions evolved first, perhaps in a situation where small numbers of people lived in kin groups. [Antonio] Damasio says, “A nice way to think about it is that we have this emotional system built in, and over the years culture has worked on it to make it even better”.

A consequence of this kind of study is that we might have to rethink what is immoral and not. If morality is automatic and unconscious process, why are we so quick to differ on what's right or wrong in a moral dilemma? The Washington Posts article says:

U.S. law distinguishes between a physician who removes a feeding tube from a terminally ill patient and a physician who administers a drug to kill the patient. Hauser said the only difference is that the second scenario is more emotionally charged -- and therefore feels like a different moral problem, when it really is not: "In the end, the doctor's intent is to reduce suffering, and that is as true in active as in passive euthanasia, and either way the patient is dead."

The difference sounds clear at first thought since it feels like an active choice to administer a lethal drug. But removing a feeding tube is equally active and the two situations should defintely be equal before the law.

Anyway, I guess we should try to think more about the end results instead of moral. A good comment on this from an interesting blog called Atheist's Wager:

"Morality is about doing the right thing when no one is watching."

Let's all do the right thing.

Classifying species

There's been a lot of articles, blog posts and news about the 300 year anniversary of Carl von Linné (Carolus Linnaeus) lately. He was born today, May 23:rd 1707 in Älmhult, Småland in southern Sweden as the son of a preacher.

In 1735 he published the first version of his now world famous Systema Naturae. It was 11 large pages that classified the natural world and humans were for the first time grouped together with other primates. The eleven pages in the first edition grew to three thousand pages in the final and thirteenth edition, published in 1770.

The system that made him famous was a simple two part naming system based on the physical attributes of the organisms. The two terms are the genus name and the specific descriptor.
The so called Linnaean taxonomy is the base for the system of scientific classification used in modern biology. Linnaeus hierarchy started with the division into three kingdoms, Animals, Plants and Minerals. The Kingdoms were divided into Classes and the Classes into Orders, which were divided into Genera, which were divided into Species. The classifications have changed a lot since Linnaeus' first version and only the groups in the Animal kingdom remain to this day, although heavily updated.

There have been some discussions about improving this centuries old classification style to something more modern, like a tree based nomenclature based on the recent discoveries from DNA studies. It's quite clear that even if animals or plants look the same, they can come from families very far apart. A classic example is the Hyrax that looks like a big guinea pig, but the closest relative is actually the Manatee. (It's also closely related to the Elephant but that's not the closest relative, even if they share the same ancestor.)

A system called PhyloCode grew out of a workshop at Harvard University in 1998 and it's still in the draft stage. Maybe the simplicity of the Linnaean system will prevail anyway. It seems to have worked quite well for the last 272 years...

Longer life

Researchers in US have found that there's a gene that has the same kind of life-lengthening property as severe calorie restriction. Cutting calorie intake by about 60% have increased the lives of everything from yeast and flies up to mice and dogs. But constantly being on the verge of starving sounds like a nightmare to me, so I'd rather wait for some pill that mimics the effects the pha-4 gene has on nematode worms.

Busy busy..

Been on a 2-week vacation to the Philippines with Justine and we just got back, hence the lack of updates to this blog.

Also, bought a new apartment yesterday so I'll be spending all my non-work time for the next few weeks fixing it. Already have one wall taken down!

I expect to do regular updates again in a few weeks. :-)

Metal

I'm amused by this recent study by Stuart Cadwallader and Jim Campbell at the University of Warwick. They conclude that gifted students use heavy metal music to unwind. There's a nice write up at the Telegraph about it. The best quote is:

"Participants said they appreciated the complex and sometimes political themes of heavy metal music more than perhaps the average pop song. It has a tendency to worry adults a bit but I think it is just a cathartic thing. It does not indicate problems."

I'm not saying I was a "stressed gifted social outsider" as student, but I have always preferred fast and noisy music over easy listening. I don't really get why most "pop" have to be so boring. The majority of the songs I hear on the radio has melodies that are slow and repetitive and lyrics that are uninspired and boring, repeating some short and stupid sentence over and over again.

I'm convinced that fast music makes the brain work harder to decipher what is going on. I think it took over 10 times of listening before I could hear the whole lyrics to 88 Finger Louie's "I've Won". Great song, nice melodies and very very fast. Adam Goren's (Atom And His Package) music is not that fast but the lyrics are probably the best ever. Very funny and because of the rhymes and word plays it's not always obvious what he's joking about.

That is the kind of music that grows on you. A song or album where you hear every twist of the melody and every word of text the first time you hear it will bore you very quickly. The brain is a pattern matching machine and to keep it happy we have to feed it tricky enough patterns to solve. I think different people have different limits, and I think mine is somewhere at The Dillinger Escape Plan. (Calculating infinity is an amazing album).

Some of my favourites:
88 Fingers Louie, Abhinanda, Atom And His Package, Bad Religion, Beatsteaks, Billy Talent, Blindside, Boy Sets Fire, Children Of Bodom, Coheed And Cambria, Down By Law, Goldie Lookin' Chain, In Flames, Incubus, Jr Ewing, Looking Forward, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Nine, Nirvana, NOFX, Q.O.T.S.A, R.A.T.M, Raised Fist, Rancid, S.O.A.D, Shai Hulud, Snapcase, Social Distortion, Spineshank, Stabb, Sublime, Sugar Ray, The Black Keys, The Bronx, The Hives, The White Stripes, The Who, Tiger Army, Tool and Zeke.

Also, always support your favorite band and go to their show if they're playing in town!

Human evolution in another light

Yesterday Scott Adams linked to an interesting article from Newsweek about human evolution. The conclusion they get to in the article is that humans didn't evolve linearly, instead lots of branches and sub species existed at the same time.

I don't understand why people find this surprising. You see it with all species in nature, be it fishes in Lake Victoria or sparrows on the Galapagos Islands. Evolution is not linear. I find it obvious that a random process will give results that diverge and spread out.

The article also suggests that by tracking specific genes in the DNA, we can find the last common ancestor to all living humans. It seems like they lived about 89,000 years ago and left Africa as recently as 66,000 years ago.

One of the last sentences in the articles says "It therefore suggests that we are still evolving.". Of course we are, who would ever think otherwise? I believe it's happening quite fast too, but with a completely different set of rules compared to back then. The definition of fitness for survival and reproduction in this modern world is nothing at all like surviving on the plains of Africa.

Scott Adams says "Fossils are Bullshit" and what he means is that the old rigid theory of evolution just doesn't feel right. I agree that the theory is far from complete and I think it's a common mistake by many scientists that when they find a proof for a particular thing within their current theory, they feel like they have to increase the scope of the theory to include things that are way beyond what they actually did prove.

Of course everyone want to make their theory more and more general and less complicated, but I think it's been proven over and over again that everything in the universe is more complicated than it looks at first glance.

A lot of times it seems like getting enough detailed information is the biggest hurdle. Often it feels like scientists spend too much time staring at the data they already have instead of thinking about new ways to find data that would shine a light on the problem from a different angle.

To use DNA in addition to the information they have from fossils and bones, like they did in the article, is a great example of finding such an additional source of data forcing them to adjust the current theory.

We should look at things from another angle more often.

TED talks to watch...

Wow! Can't wait for the movies of these talks to show up on the TEDTalks pages.. They're always worth watching. Feels good to know there's people like these guys out there.. :-)

Lack of focus

I believe that the only way to be truly great at something is by pursuing it relentlessly. Motivation, focus and determination is definitely more important than how "gifted" you supposedly are. This is even more true if the person in question is still a kid.

To become a good writer, writing a lot is the only way. To become a good painter, you have to paint a lot. To be the best programmer you can be, write as much code as you can. To be the best athlete, train harder than everyone else. This is being mentioned time and time again, but still people in general don't seem to get it. It's always "she's so talented" or "he's so lucky to be born with that gift" and so on. Of course natural predisposition plays a part too, but I don't think it's as big as people seem to make it.

The hardest thing with getting truly good at something is to give up, or at least cut back a lot, on all other activities. You need focus and have a clear goal, something to pour all your energy into. You have to want to be the best at what you do and only have that in your mind. Focus is the key.

This is a huge problem when you want to be good at everything. I just don't think it's possible be that. Sure, you can be pretty good at a lot of things, but not great at everything no matter how hard you try. Intellectually, no matter how clever you are, time is the limiting factor to what you can achieve. And the slower you think, the more time you need.

People who push them selves to extremes impress me. Not so much for the thing they chose to do, but for their ability to take on something truly extreme and just do it.

Focus people...

Staying creative

Ken Robinson who wrote Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative is also an excellent speaker. I particularly like this quote from his TED talk last year:

"Picasso once said that all people are born artists, and the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it, or rather we get educated out of it."

There's a great video of the talk over at TED Talks, please take a look.

I believe this quote is true and you can feel it if you're stuck doing uninspiring work or just watching pointless tv shows that don't make you think. There are some good tv shows that are worth watching, but I feel that the majority of them slowly kills creativity and sucks away all inspiration.

Same thing goes for the current school system. It suffocates the creativity of young people and something needs to be done about it. The status of being a teacher is not high enough and the schools never get enough resources to make studying fun. Some of us who likes to read had it easy in school, but some people just aren't made to sit still at a desk all day. I also believe there should be possible to study at different speeds. There's no point in stressing out the slower students and boring the quick ones when doing the work in your own pace is possible.

I think smaller classes would work a lot better but unfortunately there's no money for anything like that. Also, I think the parents play a huge part in their kids success. This article in New York Magazine is a great example of what can happen. I believe that hard work and being able to focus is the key. Sure, everyone starts from a slightly different position, but where you take it mainly depends on the effort you put in and really wanting to get there.

Don't let the fear of failure hinder you from reaching your goals.

To work

There's only two reasons you have to work. Either you do what you want to do, build what you want to build, or you work to make money. That's it. The key to get your dream job is to know what you want to do. Right now it feels like being a consultant is one step on the way of figuring that out.

If you work as a consultant, you do it for the money. There's absolutely zero reason for loyalty since you are not really working for yourself anyway. I wish that the job market her would be more flexible. That it would be easier for companies to hire and fire people. The laws in Sweden are way too conservative and needs to be updated.

The shortsightedness of companies never ceases to amaze me. All PHB's just talk about ROI and "Value for the share holders" and keeps looking at the next quarterly figures. What's up with that? Don't they want to build a solid, long lasting company?

Maybe I should do it myself...