Mark Twain is still one of the smartest people around

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
~Mark Twain

A friend shared Mark Twain’s Top 9 Tips for Living a Kick-Ass Life and I thought I would share them with you. Henrik Edberg did a great job of selecting some quotes from one of history’s greatest humorists and suggesting the life lessons behind them:

3. Lighten up and have some fun.

“Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”

“Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”

Humor and laughter are amazing tools. They can turn any serious situation into something to laugh about. They can lighten the mood just about anywhere.

And a lighter mood is often a better space to work in because now your body and mind isn’t filled to the brim with negative emotions. When you are more light-hearted and relaxed then the solution to a situation is often easier to both come up with and implement. Have a look at Lighten Up! for more on this topic.

More good stuff in the Positivity Blog.

The photo is Mark Twain en el laboratorio de Nikola Tesla (Nueva York, 1894), posted by Recuerdos de Pandora. See more offbeat shots of famous folks in their Personalidades slideshow.

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People, Hell and Angels

While looking for a photo to go with this great concert video of Jimi Hendrix I wanted to share, I synchonistically discovered that Jimi apparently has a “new” album that you can listen to right now: People, Hell and Angels.

Reuters explains that the songs on People, Hell and Angels were to be the follow-up to Electric Ladyland:

“After the huge success of the (Jimi Hendrix) Experience and those first albums, he wanted to branch out more, and the blues sound on this is just different from the others,” said Janie Hendrix, Jimi’s step-sister and president and CEO of Experience Hendrix, the company founded by the musician’s father to oversee the star’s estate.

…Feeling constrained by the limitations of the Jimi Hendrix Experience trio (which included drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding), the guitarist had already started working with an eclectic group of musicians.

They included the Buffalo Springfield’s Stephen Stills, drummer Buddy Miles, saxophonist Lonnie Youngblood and bassist Billy Cox, with whom Hendrix had served in the U.S. military.

The resulting sessions, culled from 1968 and 1969, form the basis of “People, Hell and Angels,” co-produced by Janie Hendrix, original engineer and mixer Eddie Kramer and long-time Hendrix historian John McDermott.

Click to listen to the album – it’s a genuine treat. The photo is by Brian T. Colvil and (speaking of treats) here’s the FIFTY-SIX AND-A-HALF MINUTE video of Jimi Hendrix live in Stockholm, 1969.

Wisdom from tramps, beats from sheep

We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.
~The Tramp as The Great Dictator (full text by Charlie Chaplan)

John Boswell (melodysheep) is back with a new single, this one of Chaplin’s speech in The Great Dictator. More of John’s excellent work on my blog.

 

March (Mercury) Madness: It’s almost like science fiction at this point

Jeff Masters of Michigan-based Weather Underground is hands-down writing some of the best articles on the March Madness that we probably should be paying the most attention to, what he calls Summer in March:

A spring heat wave like no other in U.S. and Canadian history peaked in intensity yesterday, during its tenth day. Since record keeping began in the late 1800s, there have never been so many temperature records broken for spring warmth in a one-week period–and the margins by which some of the records were broken yesterday were truly astonishing. Wunderground’s weather historian, Christopher C. Burt, commented to me yesterday, “it’s almost like science fiction at this point.” A few of the more remarkable records from yesterday:

Pellston, MI: record high broken by 32°F
Pellston, Michigan in the Northern Lower Peninsula is called “Michigan’s Icebox”, since it frequently records the coldest temperatures in the state, and in the entire nation. But the past five days, Pellston has set five consecutive records for hottest March day. Yesterday’s 85° reading broke the previous record for the date (53° in 2007) by a ridiculous 32°, and was an absurd 48°F above average.

Low temperatures beat the previous record high for the date at two stations
The low temperature at Marquette, Michigan was 52° yesterday, which was 3° warmer than the previous record high for the date!

Read on for much more including Canadian cities breaking all-time records for March and April. Also definitely see his thoughts on the statistical likelihood of breaking 100+ year-old record highs this many days in a row. Hint: the answer sounds a lot like “climate change.”

The photo is Bud Fun by LadyDragonflyCC. She’s got some great stuff.

11 is a beautiful number for the Tigers

Yesterday the Detroit Tigers tied the longest winning streak ever, and over on Absolute Michigan I posted a feature that included this incredible three-part video.

Taking time with Neptune

I posted this today over on Michigan in Pictures and thought it was too cool not to share here. My baseball-loving friends should check out yesterday’s post on Tiger All-Stars, past & present.

The planet Neptune was discovered in 1846, and at 4.5 billion km from the Sun, it completes an orbit every 164.79 years. Today – July 12, 2011 – Neptune completes the first full orbit since its discovery!

And you thought it took you a long time to get the garage cleaned out…

I took this photo early this Spring along the TART Trail in Traverse City. While I had just learned this little fact about Neptune, I actually rode out that day all the way to Pluto, a distance of about 6 miles. You can see the Sun and inner planets right at the TC Library. In their list of fun weekend things for families to do, MyNorth.com writes:

Bike through a six-mile long interactive model of the solar system on a portion of the TART trail in Traverse City. Hand-crafted sculptures of each planet and plaques sharing details about each planet dot the trail according to an accurate scale of the solar system. Beginning at the Sun directly outside the Traverse Area District Library, bikers of all ages can travel to the far reaches of Pluto and back again on wide paved trail that make the trip smooth and simple. Traverse Area District Library is located at 610 Woodmere Ave Traverse City.

Check it out on black and in my Traverse City, Michigan slideshow.

Here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own

thank you,

 

Listening to this, I wonder why the title wasn’t the line that defined Kennedy’s first inaugural. My favorite line:

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

Yeah, let’s seek that, ok?

I’m not sure if this qualifies as “intelligent risk”

My sister has been scanning in family slides and I have been crazy busy, working on our Taste the Passion and Traverse City Wine & Art Festival Winter Wine Wonderland events closing our office in Leland (where we’d been piling up stuff for 12 years) and opening an office at the Village at Grand Traverse Commons aka Building 50. Here’s my porch.

I believe that my dad is explaining to me the finer points of being a stock broker.

2012, Monument Six, Bolon Yokte & using the End of the World to sell a movie

In 2012 Isn’t The End Of The World, Mayans Insist, the AP’s Mark Stevenson took a look at mounting 2012 hysteria:

It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades — the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or “Planet X.” But this one has some grains of archaeological basis.

One of them is Monument Six.

Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet almost didn’t survive; the site was largely paved over and parts of the tablet were looted.

It’s unique in that the remaining parts contain the equivalent of the date 2012. The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation.

However — shades of Indiana Jones — erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible.

Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico’s National Autonomous University interprets the last eroded glyphs as maybe saying, “He will descend from the sky.”

Spooky, perhaps, but Bernal notes there are other inscriptions at Mayan sites for dates far beyond 2012 — including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.

You can go a lot deeper into the hysteria – including that manufactured (this site for one) by the 2012 movie promoters – along with the actual archaeology at Monument Six on the Toltec I Ching Blog.

Be sure and check this out bigger in Mananetwork’s Mexico slideshow and see a lot more of his travel photography on his blog.

A long time ago … when special effects were really hard

Computer Graphics From a Long, Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away from Topless Robot:

Oh man. /Film started my day with this 10-minute documentary from Larry Cuba about how he made the computer graphics for Star Wars, specifically, the Death Star assault video Dodonna plays for the Rebel pilots, and it is so, so awesome. Cuba is obviously so proud when he says he’s moving his Death Star model in real time, and he should be, since back in 1976 that probably needed 400 computers glued together and the blood sacrifice of a white calf. Anyways, it’s fun for Star Wars fans and a neat look back for computer nerds alike.

Imagine the movie industry doing what they do now without the plastic reality offered by oceans of computing power and unbelievable software.

Topless Robot is a kickin’ site that features geek chum like Teenage Mutant Reservoir Turtles and The 10 Best ’60s Batman TV Villains Who Should Make the Leap to Comic Books (10 villains, 10 videos including Vincent Price as the Egghead).