Ryminate

Nations who have not yet adopted the Metric system

Sight for sore eyes

After a LONG day this is the sight I love to see: My feet, alongside my wife's, up on the coffee table. For me, this is an example of one of life's simple pleasures.

Breathing Earth

I just came across an intriguing map called the Breathing Earth.  It tracks the carbon dioxide consumption around the world, as well as births and deaths in each country. Best of all?  It's in real time.

I found myself mesmerized by this thing.  Two quick observations:  the U.S. pollutes like crazy, and India has babies like crazy, (relatively speaking of course).

What do you think?

Laugh . . . it's healthy

I was reading an article the other day on the benefits of laughing.  The article cited a statistic claiming that on average children laugh 400 times a day, while adults laugh only 15 times a day.  What a remarkable variance.  I sincerely hope I laugh more than 15 times a day.  I think having kids certainly helps with that.

On a similar note, I was listening to NPR on the drive home the other day and heard about a study that seems to indicate that high stress levels actually change the way cells develop in the human body.  These subtle changes actually accelerate the aging process.  Fascinating.  If you've ever seen pictures of Abraham Lincoln before and after the American Civil War, it looks as though the man has aged 20 years.  This theory somewhat scientifically explains that change.

I guess the moral of this post is to take time to laugh.  Let's see if I can do this over the next few weeks of  law school exams!

Entrepreneurship Merit Badge

Tonight I spent the evening working with some boy scouts on their entrepreneurship merit badge.  Yes, you read correctly--the entrepreneurship merit badge.  They certainly didn't have that badge when I was a scout.  What a great thing for young people to learn.  The requirements for the badge are impressive.  The scouts must interview a entrepreneur regarding some very specific issues (e.g. recognizing market opportunities, financing), and then develop a fairly comprehensive business plan based on one an idea of their own.  I was very impressed at some of the ideas the scouts were coming up with.  In fact, I hesitate to share them here because some of them were so good that I'd be afraid someone might actually act on them.

Well, this was a great night for me combining two of my favorite things: working with young people, and entrepreneurship.

Crossing the Rubicon

The below quote really rings true for me.

“Until one is committed there is hesitating, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans. That the moment one definitely commits oneself, Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.” Johan Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

New Piano

Kristen and I have been looking to purchase a good used piano for some time now.  I've kept my eye out for good deals on both craigslist and Ebay. Several weeks ago we found a very very nice one on Ebay, which we bid on and won, but the seller backed out.  We were disappointed.  This week we found yet another, but bid unsuccessfully as the reserve price was not met; however, after the auction I contacted the seller and she agreed to sell her piano for a few hundred dollars. 

Yesterday we went to pick up the piano and were pleasantly surprised by the piano's condition.  It's almost thirty years old, but is in beautiful condition (besides needing a good tuning).  We wrestled the piano out of the seller's house, into a truck, and into our living room.  We are looking forward to having a piano over the holidays.

Generally speaking, I would recommend buying a piano on Ebay.  Because most people are very wary about bidding on a piano sight unseen over the Internet, and also are generally unwilling to pay the large shipping costs, often pianos sell for much less than their fair market value.  I would recommend waiting for a piano to come up in your area.  Then you avoid the shipping costs and can actually go look at it before you complete the purchase.

Emergency Preparedness Kit

With all the natural disasters that have occured throughout the world in the past month, Kristen and I decided to finally put together an emergency preparedness kit.  While we hope we never have to use the kit, it always good to be prepared. After looking around online compiling a good list (Download 72_hour_kit.xls), we spent an evening at Target and Home Depot gathering some of the necessities.  We placed everything in a backpack so if anything ever happens it's all in one place. 

After all that, tonight I stumbled upon a premade kit sold by Target that contains pretty much everything we just bought all in a very organized package for $99.  I would have bought the Target kit if I had known.   If you are looking for a great start to your emergency preparedness kit, check it out.

Ever want your own planetarium?

Ever want your own planetarium?  Well now you can.  There are many free software programs out there that allow you to navigate the night sky on your computer.  I really like one program called Stellarium.  Using this program you can input your longitude and latitude, and it will match the sky to your exact location and time.  It has many other features, but at the same time is very simple and straightforward.

It would be fun sometime to take the laptop outside and use Stellarium to learn some of the constellations.  Unfortunately, there's not much to see here in the city with all the light pollution. 

Discipline

Great run this morning.  It's beginning to get a bit cold, which makes for crisp mornings.

Two things I learned today:

1. There are two component parts to discipline: One is the capacity to continue moving forward when you don't want to, two is the capacity to put on the brakes before going too far.  You can think of this as kind of the yin and yang of self-mastery that can be applied to nearly every activity in life.

2. There is great value in meditation/self-reflection/pondering, whatever you want to call it.