Ted Talk – Secrets of Longevity
My latest favorite snippet of valuable learning once again comes from a TED Talk. I’ve been watching these for years.
In this talk, to find the path to long life and health, Dan Buettner and team from National Geographic study the world’s “Blue Zones,” communities whose elders live with vim and vigor to record-setting age. At TEDxTC, he shares the 9 common diet and lifestyle habits that keep them spry past age 100.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100.html
No surprise, Japan and Italy include one of the blue zones where people in a certain community share a long life. And we find out a little bit of why that is. It’s not all what you might think.
January 10, 2010 at 2:59 am | family, friends, inspiration, interesting, learning | No comment
Millions of Ideas, questions, strategies
Ever have a raging amount of enthusiasm from ideas, and you need to share them right now? You must get somebody else in on this right away? You can’t rest until something is answered? The idea is just too spacey until you can get another persons mind into it. I’ve been plagued with this for the past few weeks. Sometimes I want to get on the phone and call my friends and clients, even ones I haven’t talked to in a while. Or jump in the car and just drive over to one of their houses unannounced. Show up and say, “Hey I gotta run this by you, see what you think.” Or “I need your help, how do you….?”
I’ve managed to keep it subtle. Friendly and casual emails. Thankfully some of my friends have been responsive too, willing to help. But when it’s 6:30 am on a Sunday morning and you just want to ‘strategize’ with people, even on something not that exciting, it’s humorously painful. This need that is terrorizing me, I’m chalking up to being a little too reclusive in my lifestyle. It’s good and bad I suppose. You can’t learn without focusing on your own away from distraction, and if a side effect is a sensation that’s igniting a fire, I appreciate its usefulness. No matter what, you need others at points to build up excitement and carry it through. It takes groups of people more often to invent something vastly important or helpful and rewarding. But it’s 6:30 in the morning! Why must I be so energetic at the strangest hours? Why can’t my friends, for no reason just be up and ring my phone right now and say “Hey I’m listening, what can I do?”
I suppose this could be a cue for me to remember that I can be a source of energy and ideas and answers when my friends and family want to do something new and special, give them support, help inspire it to actually happen for them. See the idea, help flesh it out with them. Get excited about it.
July 19, 2009 at 7:54 am | inspiration, interesting, learning | No comment
This is your captain speaking
Chelsey Sullenberger was the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 that went down in the Hudson River January 15th, 2009. Everyone lived. Everyone survived with minimal injury. Sullenberger in just a few short moments proved that not only does he possibly have the biggest pair in America, but also we common people are a bunch of smartass idiots. Everyone of us who has looked at those safety cards, and said something smug and sarcastic.
By the end of the day, he had his own Wikipedia page. And you should see his fans on Facebook all 300,000 of them.
I was thinking just now if I were him what I might say over the P.A. to the passengers on my next flight. “…We’d like to welcome you today folks, looks like we have clear skies all the way to Charlotte. Oh by the way, funny story. The last time I got behind the controls here, oh man…”
Regardless of what embellishments are in the Wikipedia page, we know one thing for sure, he has the most secure job in the nation right now.
January 18, 2009 at 4:05 am | interesting | No comment
Great little bookstore
I’m giving a little promotional shout-out to a cute little store in Webster Groves, St. Louis. If you are in the neighborhood, stop into Pudd’nhead Bookstore. The reasons I appreciate this store and want to give the owner Nikki compliments is because they are doing a great job picking out a very enthralling collection for retail. It makes browsing fun, and where many small book stores bore me, she seems to be able to sync with people’s characters. Also she’s very excited about the best books and hopes others will get the enjoyment too. That’s love. These days you can get almost anything online, so it’s important that when a local store inventory is smaller that a store can still put a smile on your face. The books really need to grab you. And you can’t just stock the popular books that are at the grocery store, you have to take risks.
Noteworthy items on the shelf, The Anarchist’s Cookbook, which probably frightens off some, but it reminds me that it takes strength to not censor yourself and face danger and reality head on. Books can be powerful and dangerous and still we shouldn’t hide knowledge from people even when it seems like a book has little redeeming value. A design book by Ellen Lupton was another gem. My favorite by far was the entire section called “Economic Meltdown.” That is class my friends.
Visit Pudd’nhead Books on the web and I hope you can appreciate them as much as I did. Sometimes places are best when you discover them yourself. So forget I said anything and next time you’re in Webster, go where the wind takes you. Maybe get a coffee there while you’re at it.
December 11, 2008 at 3:45 am | books, interesting, publishing | 1 comment
Contemplate death with each inhalation and each exhalation
I was sitting in the bedroom. It was an otherwise quiet night, when an intense emotion came over me. It was a realization of me. It was a brief daydream, a bright and heavy glimpse of what my last moment alive would be like. And more frightening, what the moment just after that would be. And it felt REAL. Oh my god, I’m going to die some day and I don’t want to die. Why did I think of this? Who knows where the thought came from but it made me sad, a very real sadness. My stomach churned and I cried a little. We all have to face many fears and pains in this life. Some are more fortunate than others for reasons unknown to me. But those of us living right now will die. When I’ve thought about my death, at that moment of my death I feel cold and alone and scared. Will I fade away inside my mind? Will I be aware one moment and then just gone? What is gone? Does it hurt to be gone? Do I go somewhere. What am I like gone or in a somewhere? If I’m old and my mind is dulled, does it become sharp again?
As you might expect I was very motivated to change my thinking. I decided to do a little reading to see if I could understand this. I searched for a passage of what Buddha might have said about death. I could have searched for Jesus or another passage from another wise person. But I chose Buddha, hoping I’d find something wordly and otherworldly.
Think about death with each inhalation and each exhalation. Usually passages from these types of writings don’t come so clearly to me so quickly.
I believe I understood it as this: We can feel better about our own death by inviting the feelings of fear and pain in. Most of us don’t see that kind of self-talk as valuable. It’s morbid, it’s going to depress you. You won’t be able to function. It’s better to focus on life and ignore death, sweep it under the rug, distract yourself instead right? That’s what I thought anyway. Minutes to hours later the opposite happened. As I began letting the thought of death in and keeping the thought with me, I felt a true new state of being.
Instead of the depression and feeling of dread I thought I would have consuming me, these active thoughts of my unknown, yet eventual death gave me an appreciation, a thankfulness of every moment I was having. I could appreciate any small conversation I had with someone else. Because I was there and they were there. I could be thankful for everything that was going in my favor at that moment. Things not going in my favor, well, do they matter all that much? Now I’m feeling better, not worse. Though I can only speak with a couple days experience with these thoughts, I can presume a few things. Let’s say I have some sort of interaction with a person or group that gets me down. Maybe I made a mistake and I become embarassed or feel as if I’ve failed. How long do you think those consuming and defeating thoughts will linger when I’m continuously mindful of my own passing?
Would you think thinking about death would ruin your sense of humor? I have been appreciating good humor more, and I can enjoy the person more in the funny exchange. What about dealing with others? Would thinking about death put you into this dead zone staring into space? Actually it’s made me more responsive. I want to hear what they say and be engaged with them. I want to respond thoughtfully and not shrug people off. Will thinking about death produce a bad omen of some sort or cause your death to happen quicker? I doubt it, but how could I know that? In my experience though, people who are talking about superstitions and bad omens often come to conclusions because of ignorance.
I hesitated some writing this entry. I both don’t want to bring anyone down, but at the same time, I want people to have an experience for themselves. Why hide it? What good does hide death in the back room out of sight and mind? For me, it was at first pain and fear to think about it. And then somehow maybe a new wisdom. I’m going to end this with a few questions for you to think about. Actually they are for me to think about and revisit and exercise.
- The things you own, you can’t take with you. Where should they go?
- Do you think mindfulness of death would cause you to behave more or less rationally?
- Can you go through some pain and dream about the death you are truly afraid of?
- What kind of death could feel like a good death for you? (Don’t say “no death” because it’s pointless to try and avoid this)
- In being mindful of your own eventual death, how does it affect your thinking and relationships?
- Thinking of people who commit violent crimes, murderers. Have you ever wished death on someone like that? What do you think now when being mindful of your own death?
- If someone isn’t of the same religion as you, but you feel they are an equally good person as you. What do you think will happen to both you and them?
- Can urgency and patience go together?
I have so much more I’d like to write on this subject, but I feel if you have read it and I’ve written it well, AND you have time to quiet yourself and really think it over, then you will be better. As for me, I’m going to head upstairs to bed. I intend to sleep well tonight. I intend to wake up to a beautiful morning with new experiences and thoughts. I’m looking forward to it.
June 17, 2007 at 11:28 am | interesting, learning | 4 comments
Why having an international marriage is easier now than ever
The other day, my boss said, “Mike I don’t know how you do it, being married to someone from another country, with the language barrier. Communication is hard enough for married people from the same town and background. It has to be tough!”
It’s hard to address that kind of comment or compliment when you’re biting into a burrito on a work lunch. Later, having digested it, the statement I mean, I truly believe it is easier to have a relationship like mine (with someone from another country and culture) than it ever has been in the past. In my case an American mutt in the Midwest, making a life here with a Japanese wife.
You must have that personal time to be who you really are
Personal space can be created quite easily from the coldness of computers and the internet. No matter what size your home his, I think that you can create personal space from having separate computers. It sounds terrible doesn’t it, but it does work. Juri can research her own interests, such as crafts, Japanese news and celebrities and comedy. If you think Youtube and internet videos were just a way to waste time, but don’t provide real value, you are very wrong. It is new to us and many others over the past year and a half that Juri can watch uninterrupted streaming Japanese TV programs in short and long clips. This simple flash video technology gives her her own Japan space. It’s relief from the exhaustion of being someone else all day. She has to play the role of an english speaking teacher in real life, but at home, she can go back to Japan and laugh at Japanese comedians, see popular dramas and of course read blogs or email family and friends in her own language. As I’m writing this, she’s in that space right now, just as if she was 5,000 miles away at home. Twenty years ago, she might be able to acquire a good book collection, or a video cassette library of Japanese movies, but this isn’t the same as connecting to her culture in real time with the Internet. Almost as good as being there.
Finding a group of your own kind to connect with
Finding a support group is easier. Every organized group, including the Japanese societies that exist in any locality have some sort of online presence. It might just be a mention in an article, or a phone listing, but more likely there is a little website for the organization. This means that finding a group of like minded people is easier than ever. You can find people around you with a short search on the web such as “St. Louis” + “Swedish organizations”. You must appreciate how creating your own island of your native people is valuable to a person who is away from their home. In our case, belonging to and volunteering with the Japan-America society, we go to more events and meet more Japanese people in a few months than we would grow to know over a decade, if this was 1960. Fifteen years ago, to find them, we’d have to luckily stumble across a flyer advertising an event that we could go to or meet someone who already knew about it. Now, anyone can subscribe to multiple online calendars getting notices via email of upcoming activities within a cultural group, from festivals, to nights out for beers or a dinner party.
Family Connections
Along with a personal space and time, Juri has the benefit of email, an efficient postal system between the US and Japan, and the ever valuable Internet Relay Chat. Replaced by Yahoo Chat, which was an important tool for the two of us when separated by the Pacific, Skype is now Juri’s tool of choice to see mom and dad weekly or daily. Skype gives a simple high quality audio and decent video chat that her and her mother and father can use for free. It’s common for Juri to fire up the computer at 5:30 in the evening after work and catch her parents online cooking breakfast and ready to say hello before they head to work. Her dad also will log in at his work and chat if time permits well into our dinner time and before bed. During family gatherings when Aunts and Uncles visit, the chat line is open and we can all say hello. To be able to see your family and talk to them through a computer and having that live video is absolutely priceless.
As I mentioned before, it was Yahoo Chat that worked best, but Skype provides a near perfect audio feed, so from being upstairs and eavesdropping, the voices often sound to me like her parents are her visiting the house. Surely 10 years from now, TV screens will be larger and the video feed, beautiful and fast, clear as a home movie. For now, Juri can connect with home, even having the arguments and fights that she normally would have with parents and brother. Trust me, I’ve seen them.
Access to products formerly out of reach
In some ways, it’s unfortunate because it makes hunting for unique gifts harder, but we are exposed to all kinds of cultural artifacts and common items just by visiting certain aisles of a supermarket, or even a Target store these days. You also have the World Market, which 40 years ago, might cater to a completey different group, but now seems to fit your average design conscious citizen looking for a new kitchen set or an exotic hot sauce. We don’t have a China or Asia town where I live, but we still have places we can go. Retailers have found that providing goods from other countries is another way to stand out and to keep shoppers interested. Consumers can tap into new tastes and decorative ideas. People like my wife, are able to see products from their home country and can comment on them whether good or bad. It might seem weird, but if she sees a really bad knockoff Japan product, we can laugh about it and use that experience to learn or reminisce. That poorly crafted knockoff sitting on a store shelf somehow provides value or appreciation of home, bringing home closer for that moment.
These are just the places that might be around town, depending on the area you live. But again with an internet connection, you can access all kinds of niche stores selling the items that you might miss, such as cooking spices, snacks, utensils and wares that you would just have to go on missing if it were 1957. If Juri wants to cook something she’s used to having, most of the items can be found. Probably everything but perhaps the rarer vegetables.
Ever since we met, we’ve had really good communication, so my bosses comment somehow went over my head, as if he was talking about problems other people have. For us, mostly it’s smooth. Whatever magic that is between Juri and I, be it a mixture of the right patience for one another and ourselves, or the simple knowing that we have outlets to be ourselves and little ways to retreat, we are making it work day by day, just like any international couple from the last century would. It’s easier for us I think than it has been for others because of our historical examples we can call up, and hopes toward the future. Come to think about it, the hope may be the real reason. If you can find hope in your life you conquer and live through anything.
May 8, 2007 at 12:31 am | Japan, family, interesting, nostalgia | No comment
25 things I’m thinking about
1. I don’t introduce myself proudly enough or often enough. I can confidently say I’m a good guy.
2. removed (met that goal!)
3. Thoughout a month, I’m the most powerful and then the weakest person I know. I also cycle through being the most outgoing, fun, sad non-social, helpful, loving and off-the-wall. I think there’s no avoiding the bad spots, there’s no changing them, but I believe we all can change a state’s power and length. And though I read books from the self-help gurus, this one was actually from me.
4. I’m a pretty good video editor and animator, but I’ve become more of a perfectionist over time. Perfectionism can easily cause stress and procrastination. I do myself a huge disservice. If I would pay attention as a viewer more, I would notice that viewers are very forgiving or they just don’t notice the trees for the forest. Sometimes you have to just want to get it done.
5. When you start to wonder if having your own company is possible, just remember all the silly restaurants and shops and now e-stores selling things you’d never buy in a million years and WHO ARE DOING JUST FINE, or who might even be making huge profits!
6. I have an idea and I need some help with it. (thanks to those who have offered to help, but I can’t collaborate on it just yet)
7. Learn the art of revealing just enough, and letting people figure out your point on their own. This makes better stories. People love surprise and a chance for their brain to make the discovery. Don’t force it. Hold things back and see what happens. This is why poets deserve more credit.
8. If you ever take a friend or relative to a vacation spot or tourist attraction that you have already been, shut up and let them explore. It’s one of a few opportunities where you make the situation better by doing nothing at all.
9. A night of surfing webpages will never be as satisfying as learning to make something out of wood or paper.
10. omitted. I already figured it out.
11. The other day I called a company out of nowhere because I liked the way they created a 3D video rendering. I called out of the blue and said “Hi, you don’t know me, but I saw your video. I was wondering how you did special effect X in it. Is somebody there that might tell me?” What do you think happened after that?
12. Right now, it’s already dark outside, the ground is wet, and both are typical reasons why I would normally put off going for a run. As soon as I finish this, I’m going to run in it anyway. So there.
13. Dave Werner seems like an awesome guy. I’d like to work with him one day.
14. There comes a time in maybe everyones life they realize they will never be famous, ultra-important, or rich. This realization will depress some, and will be a huge relief to others. There are also the few that become famous and realize that it wasn’t all they thought it would be. Detachment can bring contentment I think.
15. I feel bad for people who listen to Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. Whether right or wrong, they are toxic people and should be avoided. And it’s a good thing to be watchful of your government, no matter what.
16. There’s no reason why many people couldn’t choose to cut their workday in half and spend the other half helping others through charity, participating in government to make things better, or to simply to give themselves have more choices the other half of the day. Culture doesn’t understand this. That is why sometimes you have to be different
17. I’m almost 30 years old and I spent yesterday afternoon riding skateboards with the neighbors kids. Our conversations were more meaningful than all of the chats I had at work that day.
18. Join and organization to create a new view. A view is like a path you could choose to go down which would probably lead to a new opportunity. You don’t have to follow these paths or views. But it feels really good to have them, to know that if something doesn’t work out, you COULD take one of them if you wanted. I believe if people had more views in life, you wouldn’t see so much depression and suicide among young people.
19. Try something, even if people are going to laugh at you.
20. My dad smokes cigarettes and I hate it. I’ve hated it forever. I had an idea the other day that I would mail him a letter every week with a freshly printed article about smoking and tips for quitting and handling the difficult addictions. I could have written 2 letters by now and I haven’t sent him anything. Why haven’t I?
21. I think practicing being yourself in a mirror would be a valuable exercise. Or better yet, using a video camera. We all should be able to master our best looks and expressions. That way we can communicate in the way we want to. It’s not just for actors, everyone would benefit from critiquing themselves.
22. My wife will never know how special she is to me.
23. A small part of me hopes this list will lead to something. But the bigger part doesn’t care and has enjoyed it just for the exercise.
24. The past two years have really started to feel interesting, where we the human race may be starting into the future that actually looks futuristic. I just hope we can handle it on all fronts. We need bright people to make sense of it, to steer everyone in the right direction.
25. We can all have a new beginning at any moment.
March 26, 2007 at 9:47 pm | friends, general, interesting, learning, nostalgia | 3 comments
Lens focus no more
What if you could take a photograph with a tight zoom so you are focused on a subject. Then after you have taken the picture, decide that you wanted to focus on another part of the picture instead. Within the digital data you would be able to rack focus and actually see other planes of the image. There is research being done on this technology using prototype plenoptic cameras. Check it out Stanford’s Graphics Lab.
Though this next link is a really common site you are going to run across sometime, I can tell you that graphics.com has a great set of tips / tutorials for you to soak in between Photoshop, Illustrator and others. Check out Graphics.com tips page.
November 1, 2005 at 7:18 am | graphics, interesting, photography | No comment
smick street
In other cool news, one of my friends who works at my company lives in Philidephia did me a favor. I had heard that there was an actual smick street out there so I searched google maps to find it. Sure enough, it does exist and Chris was nice enough to snap some pictures for me.
October 7, 2005 at 8:42 pm | general, interesting | 2 comments
No Junk food
I was happy to find this site this evening. NoJunkFood.org. It’s a bit depressing how despite having such a diverse population, our snacks have been homogenized to the point of scarcity.
January 29, 2005 at 1:21 am | interesting, rants | No comment
