Is this real? Hammering a nail with a lightbulb?

Can it really be done. Checkout this video of a guy hammering a nail with an incandescent light bulb

Once the new light bulb law passes, this might be all they are good for

Is there in TRUTH no BEAUTY ?

As any good student of philosophy will tell you ; the proper way to begin any debate/discussion is by first defining the terms which will be used through out the discussion and then promising not to change the definition anywhere. Well I hope to do this and I also hope to define the terms in such a way that the statements I will make will be agreed upon by everyone.

In the spirit of my introductory paragraph let me define TRUTH. Whenever I use the word TRUTH this is what I mean:

TRUTH is what an individual believes and is based on the individual knowledge of what he/she believes to be true. Furthermore Universal Truth is imaginary.

There isn't one TRUTH about anything that is universal under all circumstances. Oh, but the smart folks out there are probably saying: “What about those TRUTH'S which are TRUE in virtue of there meaning such as 2 + 2 = 4”. For the time being I will just say that those “TRUTHS” should be more properly called "FACTS" since they are understood to be true no matter what. For example, suppose I'm a space alien...If I understand the concepts of 2,4,+, and = then I can understand the equality of 2 + 2 = 4. So it is important to first realize that when I say, ‘This is TRUE’ what I am really saying is this is my belief of truth and furthermore I am impressing that you should also hold my belief. This is how I define TRUTH.

Okay So given the above definition what shall I do with it? I want to become a computer programmer. (In case you skipped my apology). With my definition of TRUTH it is TRUE that I AM a computer programmer simply by believing it is so. What I have just done is to explain the concept of all those self-help books.

Step 1: Assume (believe) ...insert thing you wish to improve upon... is true.
Step 2: Read the self-help book and realize what you at first believed to be true actually is true.

By my definition you may have realized what you believed to be true was true from the start and it took a whole book to realize a simple truth that was there all along.# This is the first applied example of what I call "common knowledge". Try using my definition of TRUTH and only my definition and many things should become clearer.

To push my idea even further let's take a look at those people whom, as it is generally regarded, have no conscience and feel no remorse. No such person actually exists but if a person believes he/she has no conscience and does everything in his/her power to prove they have no conscience than the TRUTH is that person has no conscience. Okay, so then you may ask why does it matter if the person only believes it would not that be the same thing as not having one? The answer to this is "NO". Other definitions of TRUTH lead us to believe that what is TRUE cannot be changed it just is TRUE, however, this is what I subdivided into what is a FACT not a TRUTH. With my definition of TRUTH we can simply change the TRUTH by changing what we believe. The next question is this "Is it that simple?", "Can we give a person a conscience by making that person believes he/she has one?". If the words are powerful enough we can make anyone believe anything so you can see that TRUTH is a very flexible thing.

For those of you who are bored let me bring in a little Star Trek oldie. Ahhh but I already did! The start of this chapter starts with the question "Is there in TRUTH no BEAUTY?". One of the old Star Trek episodes has this very title. It is probably some infringement of some law somewhere to tell you what that episode was about not and that it's necessary to get into anyway. If I may restate the question, and I think I have that power, to this "What is the BEAUTY of TRUTH?"

I’m sure most of you are aware of what LIE is and differences such things as a white LIE and a black LIE and all the other things which we call lies. A Lie is a bending of the truth and if truth is as flexible as I say it is, and if we truly believe our lies than our lies must be the TRUTH which means Lying can't be all that bad now can it? The truth is we LIE to make things sound better or more interesting. We hope that by shaping the truth in our own fashion we can somehow accomplish a sense of pride from others

This bending of Truth to our own needs is something we are all guilty of. Most of the time it is probably unconscious we don't even realize what we are doing. The important thing to realize is we should not bend the truth for our own needs but for the needs of everyone. This way if we make everyone believe a bent truth, which will benefit the world as a whole, this becomes the real TRUTH by my definition and this is the BEAUTY of TRUTH.

Funny Student Exam Answers

Stumpled upon: I don't know if people actually answered questions this way, but I thought they were funny none-the-less

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Double Delicious Fruit Cake

LOL...I love it, here's a super funny recipe for Fruit cake...I wonder how many out there have actuall tried it !

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Someone Moved My Damn Waste Basket: A Better Mouse Trap?

On October 19, 2006, somebody moved my waste basket. I don't like change when it is forced upon me. Should this blog be put in a waste basket? Perhaps. Only time will tell. Work is really boring, and now I have a reason to go to work. To find out who moved my trash can. I'll keep this blog going until I find out who did it and confront him, or until I get fired from my job for making this a priority over any task I have. Just in case:(This blog is meant to be humorous, funny, and silly.)

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Delusional Calgaria - Watch the Intervention Video

Check out this funny, but controversial satire produced by the Nova Scotia government. It is aimed to keep people in the maritimes from moving away for jobs. What's your opinion?

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FunkyThoughts: Long Swim...

Google Maps can be great finding directions from one place to another, but what do you need to do when traveling across the ocean. This question was asked from Google maps and look what was discovered. LOL

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Unfortunate Domain Names

From DreamHost Blog, check out these folks who didn't give enough thought to their domain name..which had rather unfortunate circumstances...

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Computer Terms

A language instructor was explaining to her class that French nouns, unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated as masculine or feminine.

Things like 'chalk' or 'pencil,' she described, would have a gender association although in English these words were neutral. Puzzled, one student raised his hand and asked, "What gender is a computer?" The teacher wasn't certain which it was, and so divided the class into two groups and asked them to decide if a computer should be masculine or feminine.

One group was composed of the women in the class, and the other, of men. Both groups were asked to give four reasons for their recommendation.

The group of women concluded that computers should be referred to in the masculine gender because:

1. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.

2. They have a lot of data but are still clueless.

3. They are supposed to help you solve your problems, but half the time they ARE the problem.

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that, if you had waited a little longer, you might have had a better model.

The men, on the other hand, decided that computers should definitely be referred to in the feminine gender because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic.

2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.

3. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.

4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

Funny Magic Mind reading Card Trick

Here's an interesting, but old magic trick video. It has been preformed countless times, but I thought'd I share it with everyone interested as a video.

Read More...

Weird brain thing when stopping in a parking lot (Opitcal Illusiosn)

Ever have this happen to you?

You're just pulling into a parking lot, you start to put your foot on the break and are coming to a stop...

At the same time a car (usually to the right of me), starts pulling out of the parking lot. You just catch it out of the corner of your eye..

Now your (or at least my) brain is confused, and thinks that my car is still moving forward, even though I am at a complete stop. Especially if you are parking near a building you may push the brake hard because you are worried for a second.

In the next second you realize what has happened, and maybe feel a little silly about it.

Whatever way you look at it, it's interesting how our brain interprets visual cues and makes assumptions which aren't always true.

More Optical Illusions...

Funny Magic Trick Mind reading

Here's an interesting, but old magic trick video. It has been preformed countless times, but I thought'd I share it with everyone interested as a video.

I remember back in elementry school, I used to show magic tricks at lunch time, they become dubbed 'Stupid Magic Tricks'...perhaps this is such an example.

Sorry the audio is so low, I have to remember to increase my mic volume sooner or later.

Cognitive Distortions

Cognitive Distortions are ‘traps’ that we can sometimes fall into which may lead to negative believes and reduced self-confidence. It is believed that by recognizing these distortions we can create positive statements to help make the situation less subjective, and thereby prevent decreased self-esteem. These are combined notes from several self-esteem books that may be you may find useful.


All-Or-Nothing: You see things as black or white categories

Overgeneralization: You see single negative events as a never-ending pattern of defeat

Mental Filter: You pick out a single negative detail, and dwell on it exclusively so that you vision of all relative becomes darkened.

Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count:” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences

Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts to support the conclusion:

Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and you don’t bother to check this out

The fortune teller error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is already an established fact

Magnification or Minimizing: You exaggerate the importance of things or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny.

Emotional Reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions reflect the way things really are. “I feel it therefore it must be true”

Should statements: You try to motivate yourself with should and must, the emotional consequence causing guilt

Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization where you attach a negative label to yourself.

Personalization: You see yourself as the cause for some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

The concept of Nothing

Any discussions involving nothing will immediately lead to a paradox yet for some reason we use the word nothing all the time. Those of you mathematicians out there, of which I certainly am not, have devised a nice mathematically representation of nothing which they call zero (0). Well could you please explain something to me? Okay by the definition of nothing (0) and the definition of 1. I will agree that 1 + 0 = 1. Which only makes sense, we are taught if Joe has 1 apple and I give him no apples (or take no apples from him) than Joe still has 1 apple. Even I, with my limited mathematical knowledge understand that, what I don't understand is 1 X 0 = 0. I was told to memorize it since the third grade. The definition of X is to add the number (in this case 1) 0 times. If I put that into English I would be saying this: Joe has 1 apple and he never(0) adds no (0) apples to it so he now has no(0) apples. Okay, so I agree that 0 X 0 must be 0 because that statements says: I have nothing and I never add nothing to it at all (which is a double negative in English) so I still have nothing. By the mathematicians very words he eliminates a definition for never dividing nothing up. (0/0). From what I do know about mathematics everything must solve (0/0) since all objects of any kind X 0 = 0. All I'm saying is we base a great deal of mathematics on a paradoxal concept which even leads to error's in English such as the above double negative. As a matter of fact a computer does not even understand this concept of nothing and will undoubtedly complain should I ask it to tell me (0/0). Calculators do the same thing.

Well I still didn't tell you what nothing is have I? (that sounds like an interesting statement) When all else fails, when all idea's have been exhausted, when thought breaks down into elementary concepts, and when we are absent from all we know to be TRUE what is left then is nothing.

You can't touch it, you can't smell it, you will never see it but it "exists" nevertheless. What is between any two objects in a vacuum? The moral is be VERY careful when using a concept such as nothing.

Okay the last concepts I wish to discuss is the word GOOD and the word RIGHT. These are two other concepts that the dictionary conveniently jumps around on. RIGHT I think I can easily define because I have already defined TRUTH. In this book what is RIGHT is what is held to be TRUE. Keep in mind that this means that RIGHT is as individual as TRUTH and it is not collectable as society might make it appear to be. We only make it appear so because we do function in a society and as such we must "bend" the "truth" so everyone will believe one thing is RIGHT and another is WRONG.

The concept of Good is a difficult one because it involves some emotional assumptions that won't be discussed in detail until later in this book. An individual does GOOD when he/she commits an ACT believed to be RIGHT, also believing the consequence of that ACT to be RIGHT and furthermore having a "feeling" that the ACT benefits people as a whole. The "feeling" is the most important part of this definition because we "feel" Good when we do Good.

I hope your not bored with all this defining business but just look at it as bookkeeping so later on when you disagree with something I've said you can just go back to the definition and try and see it from my point of view. Of course you must agree with my definitions and I hopefully have convinced you of their validity. Here is the biggest application of my definition, which is the scope of this entire book. In other words if you skipped this entire chapter you should READ at least this part:

All knowledge in any form, whether spoken, written, acted, once it has ended you are left thinking. This is the key of a good story but after a while that thinking subsides and other things enter your mind. I want to leave you thinking with this book and continue thinking the rest of you life this is DOW. The end result of all knowledge is the same if we think about it long enough. From Stephen Hawking, to All My Children, to Sesame Street. They all DO the same thing. They all invoke thought and when we invoke thought we open up worlds which otherwise would never be possible.


Well I hope you can see how one definition can spawn a number of different things about life. I should stress that I am not saying we should let everyone out of prison just because they'll promise to be good. However when a person really does believe they can feel remorse...when they really do feel it of there own accord and when they are prepared to re-enter society then those people deserve the a chance to start over because those are the people who will not go back to prison and those are the people who have earned it. It just takes some longer than others.

What is Choas Anyway?

Funny Thoughts:

What if ‘chaos’ is simply an un-understood pattern?

What if there exists another ‘realm’ beyond self-awareness. A ‘total’ awareness of how all things in the universe work together and form a common relationship.

What if the discovery of this relationship, and the gap between the mind (imagination, thought process) and reality, is contained within this ‘total awareness’.

To understand, to become ‘totally aware’ might be a kin to ‘touching god’.

The clues/puzzles may be already laid out for us, (full or in part), as we grow and evolve we understand more and more about the word around us. Eventually we will discover that everything is inter-related (perhaps to be expressed in mathematics) and thus we will understand the true nature of the universe.

In summary, the universe may in fact be an entity onto itself, An entity which we can observe parts of, but not yet the whole. Something which we cannot yet fully comprehend. Something that lives and breathes. That all apparent ‘random’ events are set in motion by one governing law, one ultimate destination that eludes us. If we were to discover it, if it were to be known by all people and shared, live would be changed forever

Long Swim...

Special thanks to Jason for this funny item I received in an email. Try it out for yourself first


Go to: http://maps.google.com
Go to: "Get Directions"
Type in From: "new york, new york"
Type in To: "paris, france"

funnyness is about step 23 or so



[ If you don't see the same funniness you can check out the what we received when we tried it]

Effective Meetings

To get maximum benefit from any meeting, consider these questions:

• Do I know the purpose for the meeting, why is it being called ?
• Is it clear who is leading the meeting ?
• Is there an agenda ?
• Did I get the agenda in advance, so that I could prepare for the meeting ?
• Is there a time limit set for the meeting ?
• Do I need to be present for the whole meeting, or can I just attend for a shorter period of time ?
• Did I get minutes from the last meeting ?
• Will minutes and actionable items be tabled at this meeting ?
• Was I given enough notice of the meeting ?
• If the meeting has been called with very little, or no notice, is it a real emergency ?
• Should I be attending the meeting versus working on the priroties I have set for the day.

Qualties of an effective meeting:

Generates: Focus ; Enthusiam, Clear expectations ; improved communication; Synergy
Acheives Results

Some valuable types of meetings to have:

Planning sessions- Figuring out what as a team we plan to do

Brainstorming - get lots of ideas from different perspectives.

Identifying problems and needs

Setting goals

Engergizing & Supporting People

Evaluating Results and celebrating sucesses

Focus on ‘what’ needs to be done ; not necessarily the details of how it should be done ; generate owners for ‘hows’ ; expected results; and a timeframe to members of the team, and avoid getting bogged down in conflicting suggestions and methods from everyone.

It must be true - I read it on the Internet

I was on my way to the post office to pick up my case of free m & m's (sent to me because I forwarded their e-mail to five other people, celebrating the fact that the year 2000 is "MM" in Roman numerals) when I ran into a friend whose neighbor, a young man, was home
recovering from having been served a rat in his bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken - which is predictable, since as everyone knows, there's no actual chicken in Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is why the government made them change their name to KFC.

Anyway, one day this friend went to sleep and when he awoke he was in his bathtub and it was full of ice and he was sore all over and when he got out of the tub he realized that HIS KIDNEYS HAD BEEN STOLEN. He saw a note on his mirror that said "Call 911!" but he was afraid
to use his phone because it was connected to his computer, and there was a virus on his computer that would destroy his hard drive and infect all the electronics in his house if he opened an e-mail entitled "Join the crew!"

He knew it wasn't a hoax because he himself was a computer programmer who was working on software to prevent a global disaster in which all the computers get together and distribute the $250.00 Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe under the leadership of Bill Gates. (It's true - I read
it all last week in a mass e-mail from BILL GATES HIMSELF, who was also promising me A free Disney World vacation and $5,000 if I would forward the e-mail to everyone I know.)

The poor man then tried to call 911 from a pay phone to report his missing kidneys, but a voice on the line first asked him to press #90, which unwittingly gave the bandit full access to the phone line at the guy's expense. Then reaching into the coin-return slot he got jabbed with an HIV-infected needle around which was wrapped around a note that said, "Welcome to the world of AIDS."

Luckily he was only a few blocks from the hospital - the one where that little boy who is dying of cancer is, the one whose last wish is for everyone in the world to send him an e-mail and The American Cancer Society has agreed to pay him a nickel for every e-mail he receives. I sent him two e-mails and one of them was a bunch of X's and O's in the shape of an angel (if you get it and forward it to more than 10 people, you will have good luck but for 10 people you
will only have OK luck and if you send it to fewer than 10 people you will have BAD LUCK FOR SEVEN YEARS).

So anyway the poor guy tried to drive himself to the hospital, but on the way he noticed another car driving without its lights on. To be helpful, he flashed his lights at him and was promptly shot as part of a gang initiation.

Send THIS to all the friends who send you their junk mail and you will receive 4 green m&ms, but if you don't the owner of Proctor and Gamble will report you to his Satanist friends and you will have more bad luck: you will get cancer from the Sodium Laureth Sulfate in your
shampoo, you/your wife will develop breast cancer from using the antiperspirant which clogs the pores under your arms, and the U.S. government will put a tax on Your e-mails forever.

I know this is all true 'cause I read it on the Internet.

Parmasean Chicken Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1/2lb chicken or chicken pieces
• Mozeralla Cheese(Shredded)
• Spaghetti Sauce
• Salt, Pepper, Parmesan Cheese
• Pkg of spaghetti or spiral noodles

Instructions:

1. Preheat ovan to 350F
2. Line glass dish with tin foil
3. Place chicken on tin foil
4. Shread the cheese (if needed)
5. Place 1/2 the spaghetti sauce on the chicken then add the cheese
6. Bake chicken until cooked
7. Boil the spaghetti noodles or spiral noodles
8. Heat the remainder of the spaghetti sauce
9. Drain cooked noodles
10. Add heated sauce and cooked noodles together
11. Place noodles on plates and add a piece of chicken to each plate
12. Add salt, paper, and Parmesan cheese to test

Enjoy !

On Teams and Hope

Each individual has many specific talents, and abilities, and goals.

No one really works in isolation, communication is essential to the human experience.

Each individual is a collection of parts (brain, body, hands), yet somewhere outside of these abilities we seem to be more then the sum of these parts.

When a collection of individuals are committed to a common goal and the lines of communication between these individuals is significantly strong we can call this grouping a team.

Given the statements above, is it unreasonable to assume that the team is more the sum of the individuals, talents, and abilities. That true ‘team effort’ produces an effect someone beyond that which could be accomplished by individuals.

…Have you ever experienced this yourself ?

…Sometimes choices thought best for the group may conflict with the individual. In such cases, Does the welfare of the group outweigh that of the individual ?

I believe therein lies the hope for continuous improvement. Working together, we can arrive at solutions, that might never otherwise been thought of, head down roads that maybe we are afraid to travel alone.

True success is a measure of our accomplishments to where our expectations lead us. Perhaps, team success evolves as more than the sum of individual successes…more then any individual had previously comprehended.

So your going to be a Dad !

Warning: The surgeon general advises that sex may cause pregnancy !

If you know nothing else about me, you should know that I like to read books. Books on everything ,every subject imaginable. So when I first found out I was going to be a Dad, where was the first place I headed ? (after my parents house)...to the bookstore where I found this book, "So you're going to be a Dad by Peter Downey"

Mr Downey touts this book as a book about fatherhood by a regular guy and made for guys. From the very first page to the very last I found this book to be an excellent read. It is clear, consice and quite funny (at least for my sense of humor).

Inside Downey talks about his experiences becoming a Dad and offers suggestions on being a good dad. He wrote the book because he found there were not many good books written for fathers that didn't involve big degrees using lots of complicated wording.

Now, I have been a father for over 2 years and I'm no expert. I still find his book useful, entertaining and refreshing view on fatherhood. It's nice to go back and see how my views have changed and related to his thoughts..and warnings.

This is definitly a book made for guys and certainly worth the few buck's it costs to buy it. Even if you don't fully appreciate it right away, you certainly will soon after becoming a dad.

Good Luck...you're probably going to need it :-)

About the Author

Peter Downey lives in the suburbs with his wife and three children. When not writing, he is a high school English teacher. He wrote this book because he believes somebody should warn dads-to-be about the enormous changes fatherhood will bring to their lives. He also wrote this book because he believes that our society needs more good dads.

A Little Story

This is a story about four people named, Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but nobody realized that Anybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

Using your Yahoo Avatars on other webpages !

I ased this question a while ago on Yahoo Answers.

Can I put my Yahoo avatar on my personal web page?

At the time (8 months ago) I didn’t really get any answers, Recently while browsing through blog explosion, I found a google (blogger) entry where someone had done just that !

It’s really pretty easy, just create an ‘image’ tag in HTML with the following line

http://lookup.avatars.yahoo.com/wimages?yid={YahooID}
&size=large&type=jpg

and viola, your Avatar shows up in ‘near real’ time however you have ‘dressed it up’. Don’t forget to replace {YahooID} with your Yahoo ID for it to work.

For just the ’small head version’ use

http://lookup.avatars.yahoo.com/wimages?yid={YahooID}&size=
medium&type=jpg

It works great !

Enjoy !

Classic Fruit Cake Recipe

Double Delicious Fruit Cake

INGREDIENTS:

---

• 1 CUP Flour
• 1 CUP Sugar
• 4 LARGE Eggs
• 2 CUPS Dried Fruit
• 1 tspn Baking Soda
• 1 tspn Salt
• 1 CUP Brown Sugar
• Lemon Juice
• Nuts
• 1 Bottle Wiskey

  PREPARATION:

  ---

  Sample the wiskey to check for quality. Take a large bowl. Check wiskey again to make sure it's the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink. Repeat. Turn on the electric mixer, beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add one teaspoon of sutar and beat again.

  Make sure the wiskey is still okay. Cry onother tup. Turn off the mixer. Break two leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit. Mix on the turner. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaters pry it loose with a drewscriver.

  Sample the wiskey to check for tonsisticity. Next, sift two cups of salt or something. Who Cares? Check the wiskey again. Now sift the lemon juice. Now sift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Spoon. Of sugar or something. Whatever you can find.

  Greese the oven. Turn the cake tin to 350 degrees. Don't forget to beat off the turner. Throw the bowl out the window, check the wiskey and go to bed.