As many of you know, I have a background as a chemistry teacher. I’ve come to realize that much of what I teach my students applies not only to what goes on in the classroom, but in life also. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. You see, technically, chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change: Electrons change their energy levels. Molecules change their bonds. Elements combine and change into compounds. But that’s all of life, right? It’s the constant, it’s the cycle. It’s solution, dissolution. Just over and over and over. It is growth, then decay, then transformation. It’s fascinating really. It’s a shame so many of us never take time to consider its implications.
I mean, I know this is from a television show about cooking meth (a fantastic show, if you haven’t watched yet), but still. This statement should ring true for all students who have studied any science.
A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full.. The students responded with a unanimous ‘yes.’
The professor then produced two Beers from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand.The students laughed..
‘Now,’ said the professor as the laughter subsided, ‘I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—-your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions—-and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.. The sand is everything else—-the small stuff.
‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued, ‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life.
If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.
Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and mow the lawn.
Take care of the golf balls first—-the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the Beer represented. The professor smiled and said, ‘I’m glad you asked.’ The Beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of Beers with a friend.
(via flames692)
“Most reality shows can only offer their participants free booze and a fleeting chance at fame, but a new reality show called “Mars One” is upping the ante in a big, big way: they’re offering their cast a one-way ticket to Mars. Yes, really…. A Dutch company is now accepting applications for aspiring astronauts/reality TV stars. The plan is for the first group of humans to depart for their new home planet in 2023, with subsequent crews joining them every two years (the journey from Earth to Mars takes seven months). Colonizing the red planet will cost an estimated $6 billion, which is where the reality show angle comes in.
According to Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp, “Mars One intends to maintain an ongoing, global media event, from astronaut selection to training, from liftoff to landing…If humans land on Mars, everyone will want to watch. It will be bigger than the Olympic Games.” Potential participants need to keep in mind that the show might turn out to be more like “The Hunger Games” than “Mars-y Shore”: “There will be emergencies and deaths,” Lansdorp said. “We need to make sure that crew members can continue without those people.” Eesh.
If you’re still itching to join the cast of Mars One, you must pass two eligibility requirements: participants must be 18 years or older, and willing to live out their entire lives on another planet, because Mars One does not plan for any return missions to Earth.
So, who’s ready to send in their application? (If you’re on the fence, keep in mind there’s a $38 application fee.) I’m going to go ahead and sit this one out, but lord knows I’ll be watching whatever crazy show they put together. Really hoping they have some kind of romantic re-population ceremony on the peak of Olympus Mons”
^This is CRAZY, but real. Thats deffiantly gonna be insane to watch.I applied. My husband got mad. heehee. I didn’t get mad when he joined the Army. lol. this is A TAD different tho
yeah, just a TAD different. hah
“The monetary cost for a rape victim to receive treatment at a hospital in the United States.”
EVERYONE
EVERYONE
EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THIS
This scares the hell out of me
(via always-have-a-towel)
d’awww!
(via goodgolly-missmolly11)
Post-mastectomy tattoos by Tina Bafaro. Photos by Bafaro.
(via sunnydrerealestate)
Architectural Density in Hong Kong
With seven million people, Hong Kong is the 4th most densely populated places in the world. However, plain numbers never tell the full story. In his ‘Architecture of Density’ photo series, German photographer Michael Wolf explores the jaw-dropping urban landscapes of Hong Kong. He rids his photographs of any context, removing any sky or horizon line from the frame and flattening the space until it becomes a relentless abstraction of urban expansion, with no escape for the viewer’s eye. Infinite and haunting.
Editor’s Note: Co-signed.
This terrifies me.
(via warpedpassage)
Still under the impression that video games are strictly for kids? Hilda Knott would like to have a word with you. And perhaps a game.
The 85-year-old British gamer has been mashing buttons for 40 years — roughly the life of the video game industry – and is showing no signs of slowing down.
We’re not talking about just a bunch of boring PC card games, either. In a video interview with the BBC, Knott, who turns 86 next month, shows off her formidable gaming setup, including a sweet 65-inch HDTV and a brand new Playstation 3 Superslim. She discusses her love of Grand Theft Auto IV, which she had a “hilarious” time playing with her 94-year-old-aunt.
Knott acknowledges that her deep love of gaming has helped her stay mentally fit, because “a lot of them have puzzles, working out how to do something.”
She isn’t joking, either, as the video shows her playing the niche tactical role-playing game, Disgaea 4. That’s hardcore. This lady is a gamer, through and through.
And while many of her fellow octogenarians credit games like Wii Sports for keeping them physically active, Knott’s favorite part about playing video games will sound more familiar to the Halo crowd.
“Finding something new in the game,” she says. “Getting on to the next stage, or the next event. And the achievement of finishing it.”
With 40 years of gaming under her belt, we imagine she’s finished quite a few. Hats off to you, Hilda!
Fuck yeah
(via 30casterlyrock)
It took 33 years, but Terry Fox has made it all the way to Hollywood.
On the anniversary of the day Fox started his Marathon of Hope by dipping his prosthetic leg in the Atlantic Ocean, his family and a California production company announced they’re hoping to bring his life story to the big screen.
Terry Fox: the Feature Film will go beyond the movie and TV efforts of the past and bring star power to his cause, with 100 percent of the film’s profits going to cancer research.
“We really need a real hero today, we don’t have them,” said producer Kelly Slattery. “When Americans think of heroes, they think about how much money an athlete has and how powerful they are … Terry Fox died with a nickel in his pocket and raised $22 million and gave his life. That’s a real hero. We need to get back to what charity really is.”
Slattery grew up in Toronto surrounded by images of Terry Fox. “We didn’t have crucifixes. We had Terry Fox on our walls. He’s definitely who we looked up to,” she said.
Her father, an Adidas executive, framed the letter he received from Terry asking for a shoe sponsorship. He spoke often of the young hero to his kids and collected all sorts of memorabilia — images that stayed with Slattery her whole life.
Generations of Canadians have been moved by the story of a quiet young man from British Columbia who hop-stepped halfway across the country on one leg to raise money for the disease that cut his run and his life short in 1981 at age 22.
Slattery, now a Los Angeles-based movie producer, wants to take that story global, bringing it to a new generation and reviving Fox’s dream of finding a cure.
Her company, Therapy Content, won accolades at this year’s Sundance Film Festival for Dave Grohl’s documentary Sound City, and is looking to build on that success with a non-profit feature film, budgeted at about $10 million.
“Our goal is to have this be the biggest philanthropic campaign of all time,” said the producer, who hopes to make $100 million for the Terry Fox Research Institute. “It sounds outlandish, but I’m with Terry Fox. I have big dreams.”
The film will do more than remind people of his story. Envisioning an actor such as Anton Yelchin (Like Crazy) playing the lead, Slattery wants to plunge into the little-known nitty-gritty details, like the days he ran through the snow and the nights he slept in a van with no heat.
She hopes to inspire millions of young people to start up Terry Fox runs across America.
“There is a power to Terry Fox and what he did: that subconscious message of greatness,” said Slattery.
Darrell Fox, who accompanied his brother for every step of the Marathon of Hope, is a big supporter of the project.
“I’m reminded of 1980, when I was hanging out with Terry in a stinky Ford van,” he said. After an event outside of Toronto, Terry was approached by a reporter who asked him what he hoped would come of his run.
“And with two words he said: ‘more money,’” remembered Darrell. “That’s a driver for us. We’re on a journey; we’re trying to finish the Marathon of Hope. We’ve certainly come a long way in eliminating the suffering that cancer causes, but it is a journey and there’s still more to accomplish.”
Terry Fox was a Real Canadian Hero. I’m so glad to hear that a film of his life is in the works.
Wasting away: Our garbage by the numbers
In today’s culture of mass consumption, the things we throw away often vanish from our minds, but all that trash has to go somewhere. Look at the numbers on garbage and you’ll see it’s more than just trashy — it’s appalling. Luckily, there’s plenty we can do about it.
(via andasfortakingitinstride)
Simpler Brain Lets iCub Learn Language
Side Note: Not all would agree but I think this advancement in robotics could be a gigantic leap in the way artificial intelligence (A.I.) grows in future robots that will need some kind of advanced A.I. For instance, how do we suppose any sentient being with the capacity to learn..learns? Although it may not be the paramount function of robotics, communicating is definitely up there in the list of obstacles needed to be apprehended if we are to have competent robots making human interactions. For it is because of communication that we learn to pass on data, and language is a form of it.
Think of it this way, a robot that understands how language works and even knows how to use it, is a robot that has been given a new pathway to understanding. A pathway that we as humans have acquired and while we haven’t mastered it I believe we do have enough experience with it to imitate it and implement it in fields where it is most needed. What I really took from this article however is the fact that the researchers looked at how the brain actually works in order to mimic the way we form and understand language. This is how robotics ought to be looked at, we see our biological nature and mimic it to the best of our abilities using technology. Working with simpler versions while upgrading along the way.
This technological prowess was made possible by the development of a “simplified artificial brain” that reproduces certain types of so-called “recurrent” connections observed in the human brain. The artificial brain system enables the robot to learn, and subsequently understand, new sentences containing a new grammatical structure. It can link two sentences together and even predict how a sentence will end before it is uttered. This research has been published in the journal PLoS One.
Inserm and CNRS researchers and the Université Lyon 1 have succeeded in developing an “artificial neuronal network” constructed on the basis of a fundamental principle of the workings of the human brain, namely its ability to learn a new language. The model was developed after years of research in the Inserm 846 Unit of the Institut de recherche sur les cellules souches et cerveau, through studying the structure of the human brain and understanding the mechanisms used for learning.
One of the most remarkable aspects of language-processing is the speed at which it is performed. For example, the human brain processes the first words of a sentence in real time and anticipates what follows, thus improving the speed with which humans process information. Still in real time, the brain continually revises its predictions through interaction between new information and a previously created context. The region inside the brain linking the frontal cortex and the striatum plays a crucial role in this process.
Based on this research, Peter Ford Dominey and his team have developed an “artificial brain” that uses a “neuronal construction” similar to that used by the human brain. Thanks to so-called recurrent construction (with connections that create locally recurring loops) this artificial brain system can understand new sentences having a new grammatical structure. It is capable of linking two sentences and can even predict the end of a sentence before it is provided. To put this advance into a real-life situation, the Inserm researchers incorporated this new brain into the iCub humanoid robot.
So while we’re still years maybe decades away from normal social interactions with them, it seems like the way robots will interact with humans (and other functional benefits that come with understand and using language) just got a much needed boost in its progress. Can’t wait to see the evolution of their language come to fruition.
(via dead-until-dark)
(via warpedpassage)
A man went to pick up his fiancee who was babysitting, and he met one of the kids — then filmed a conversation with him. The 9-year-old shared his thoughts on the universe, other life forms, destiny, why people play sports, and how people interpret music.
What these extremely successful people were doing at age 25
Some people know what they want to do from an early age and focus on it relentlessly. Others reinvent themselves, changing careers and industries until they find something that works.
Billionaire Mark Cuban struggled when he first started, writing in “How To Win At The Sport Of Business“ that “when I got to Dallas, I was struggling — sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment.”
As a reminder that the path to success is not always linear, we’ve highlighted what Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and 17 other fascinating and successful people were doing at age 25. (Martha Stewart; Flickr; YouTube)
To This Day Project - Shane Koyczan
“We are graduating members of the class of Fuck-Off-We-Made-It.”
I realize that many of you have already seen this video since its debut in February, but for those that haven’t it’s a very well done clip about bullying.
Many people have experienced some form of bullying. For those that haven’t, consider yourselves lucky. Remember to be kind to others, because contrary to the sticks-and-stones phrase, words can really hurt and have a lasting impact.
