This kid makes more sense than the 535 in charge. He makes a point that is so simple even an old guy like me can understand it. With kids like this coming up, we don’t have to worry about what kind of country we are leaving for them.
Filed under: Conservative, family, Government, Uncategorized | Tagged: America, Borrowing, Kids View, taxes | 1 Comment »
Glass takes one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times!
Gold is the only metal that doesn’t rust, even if it’s buried in the ground for thousands of years.
Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.
If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. When a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.
Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals.
Kites were used in the American Civil War to deliver letters and newspapers.
The song, Auld Lang Syne, is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year.
Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent.
Peanut oil is used for cooking in submarines because it doesn’t smoke unless it’s heated above 450 F.
The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.
Nine out of every 10 living things live in the ocean.
The banana cannot reproduce itself. It can be propagated only by the hand of man.
Airports at higher altitudes require a longer airstrip due to lower air density.
The University of Alaska spans four time zones.
The tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot heal itself.
In ancient Greece, tossing an apple to a girl was a traditional proposal of marriage. Catching it meant she accepted.
Warner Communications paid $28 million for the copyright to the song Happy Birthday.
Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
A comet’s tail always points away from the sun.
The Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 caused more death and illness than the disease it was intended to prevent.
Caffeine increases the power of aspirin and other painkillers, that is why it is found in some medicines.
The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.
If you get into the bottom of a well or a tall chimney and look up, you can see stars, even in the middle of the day.
When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is sight.
In ancient times strangers shook hands to show that they were unarmed.
Strawberries are the only fruits whose seeds grow on the outside.
Avocados have the highest calories of any fruit at 167 calories per hundred grams.
The moon moves about two inches away from the Earth Each year.
The Earth gets 100 tons heavier every day due to falling space dust.
Due to earth’s gravity it is impossible for mountains to be higher than 15,000 meters.
Mickey Mouse is known as “Topolino” in Italy .
Soldiers do not march in step when going across bridges because they could set up a vibration which could be sufficient to knock the bridge down.
Everything weighs one percent less at the equator.
For every extra kilogram carried on a space flight, 530 kg of excess fuel are needed at lift-off.
The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements.
Filed under: Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged: Trivia | 1 Comment »
Back in the ancient days of the 1980’s I read a book that changed my life. Megatrends by John Naisbett was a compilation of things that were coming. It was all based on gathering information bit by bit from across the country to predict coming trends. My personal opinion and experience was that the trends predicted were 100% accurate. Naisbett followed the first book with Megatrends 2000, also predicting things to come. When I read the following e-mail from a close friend it reminded me of the Megatrend books. The predictions being made are not just someone’s vision of what the future will look like, but rather a forward thinking picture of what is coming based on activity happening right now.
One of my wishes is to live a hundred years from now so I can see what the world will be compared to what it is now. That won’t happen, because men just don’t live to be two hundred years old, at least not yet.
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From the Singular University Summit
Into the future
Reported By Udo Gollub at Messe Berlin, Germany
In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt.
What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years – and most people won’t see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on film again?
Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore’s law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time, before it became way superior and got mainstream in only a few short years. It will now happen with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs. Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Exponential Age.
Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.
Uber is just a software tool, they don’t own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world.
Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don’t own any properties.
Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.
In the US, young lawyers already don’t get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans.
So if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% less lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain.
Watson already helps Doctors diagnosing cancer, 4 times more accurate than human doctors. Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.
Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don’t want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver’s license and will never own a car.
It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars for that. We can transform former parking spaces into parks. 1.2 million people die each year in-car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 60,000 mi (100,000 km), with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 6 million mi (10 million km). That will save a million lives each year.
Most car companies will probably become bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels.
Many engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; are completely terrified of Tesla.
Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.
Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood.
Electric cars will become mainstream about 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact.
Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. Energy companies are
desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that can’t last. Technology will take care of that strategy.
With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination of salt water now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter (@ 0.25 cents). We don’t have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.
Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies who will build a medical device (called the “Tricorder” from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breathe into it.
It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world-class medical analysis, nearly for free. Goodbye, medical establishment.
3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies have already started 3D printing shoes.
Some spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past.
At the end of this year, new smart phones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home.
In China, they already 3D printed and built a complete 6-story office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that’s being produced will be 3D printed.
Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go in, ask yourself: “in the future, do you think we will have that?” and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner?
If it doesn’t work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st century.
Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a small time.
Agriculture: There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all day on their fields.
Aeroponics will need much less water. The first Petri dish produced veal, is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows. Imagine if we don’t need that space anymore. There are several startups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labeled as “alternative protein source” (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).
There is an app called “moodies” which can already tell in which mood you’re in. By 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions, if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it’s being displayed when they’re telling the truth and when they’re not.
Bitcoin may even become the default reserve currency. Of the world.
Longevity: Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year. Four years ago, the life span used to be 79 years, now it’s 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more that one year increase per year. So we all might live for a long, long time, probably way more than 100.
Education: The cheapest smart phones are already at $10 in Africa and Asia. By 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smart phone. That means, everyone has the same access to world-class education.
Every child can use Khan academy for everything a child learns at school in First World countries. We have already released our software in Indonesia and will release it in Arabic, Suaheli and Chinese this Summer, because I see an enormous potential. We will give the English app for free, so that children in Africa can become fluent in English within half a year.
Filed under: Aging, Biography, Education, family | Tagged: Megatrends, Singular University SUmmit, Trends | 1 Comment »
My system for picking movies at the library is much the same as picking books. Go in look at the DVD cover art, and titles and pick something that looks interesting based on the actors. This time Julie Christie , and Olympia Dukakis attracted me to pick up a film titled Away From Her. I promised Peg that this was a chick flick and that we would watch it together. I had the disc in the player and was fumbling with a remote to change from cable to the DVD when a town hall meeting with Donald Trump and Sean Hannity appeared. Peg fixated on Trump and that is what we watched.
After we put her to bed I watched the movie alone. I am so glad we didn’t see it together. I hated it. By far the most depressing film I have ever seen. Even the music was depressing. I should have known better because the film is about a husband and wife facing Alzheimer’s. At age seventy-six Ms Christie is still a very attractive woman. Of course that is coming from a man who is older. Most guys my age view any woman who is younger as ‘HOT,’ but she is still quite hot.
Maybe the story depressed me because it is about the life Peg and I are living, and it was a look into the future. Although, Peg is much further along in the progression than the character Fiona was in this film. Some of the Alzheimer’s traits depicted Peg has never experienced yet. One scene in which Fiona wanders off and gets lost is not one of Peg’s traits. Peg has never wandered, and is now so progressed that she is unable to walk by herself much less wander. Fiona had issues with her husband, and she seemed to use her disease against him, like quickly attaching herself to a man in the nursing home, and ignoring her faithful husband who visited daily. I like to think it was her disease working against him and not her deviousness.
The film has a surprise ending which caught me off guard when one day Fiona has a brief instance of total recall when her husband visits, and they hug again as would a man and wife married for forty-two years. I’m still waiting for that moment, but I cherish the times when I get a smile or a few words.
I recommend this film for anyone who wants to get a short glimpse of life with a dying brain. If you are already experiencing someone with the disease it will only make you more depressed.
Filed under: Aging, Movie Review, Uncategorized | Tagged: Alzheimers, Julie Christie | Leave a comment »
Last night I watched a film called the Wolf of Wall Street. It was not what I had imagined it to be. It was much worse. I thought perhaps the story would expose some bad things going on like insider trading or such. Instead the story was about sex, drugs, and downright theft from thousands of unsuspecting investors. I came away from this three-hour debacle hoping it was not based on a true story. This morning I looked it up. My worst fears have been realized, it is true, in fact, the real Wolf of Wall Street claims he led a much worse life than what is depicted in the film.
Leonardo Di Caprio did a very good job of depicting the main character, and it is obvious as to why there were five Academy Awards nominations for the film. I am glad, however, that it did not win a single Oscar. However, it did win many other awards. Giving it Oscars would have been condoning the activity of the lifestyle and the immoral trading conducted by the firm of Stratton Oakmont.
I found the story fascinating because of the ingenious way the Wolf founded his company, and titillating because of all the very explicit sex scenes. I didn’t appreciate having to spend three hours to see it.
I’m glad I watched it, now I can strike it off my list of movies to see, but I don’t think I am a better man for having seen it, it didn’t teach me anything about life. It did make me appreciate that my ethics are far more moral than a lot of other people’s.
I give this movie three icons. & & &
Filed under: Biography, Movie Review, Uncategorized | Tagged: Di Caprio, The Wolf of Wall Street | 2 Comments »
Death Of the Shining City
