December 2009
8 posts
Religion: Deferring the one life you get to an...
Even if a billion people believe in something, it can still be ridiculous. Religion, in particular organized religion is the biggest scam in the history of mankind: it deprives man of his rationality and critical thinking and puts him under the control of corrupt “religious leaders” who more often than not have their own self-interest at heart.
Quite often the church/sect he is a...
Lay down your burdens
In a world full of adversity and setbacks, it is easy for people to become embittered, angry, cynical or even depressed. Or you could use adversity to find inner strength and growth.
I recently suffered a setback that could have beaten me down to my knees. But instead I chose to find opportunity and strength from the situation. The results? I have bounced back with a sense of new-found...
Year-end review of 2009, intentions for 2010
I’m following the lead of fellow bloggers Illuminated Mind and The Art of Non-Conformity in taking a look in the rear-view mirror at 2009, what I’m happy with and what I’m less than happy with, while at the same time taking a look forward at 2010 and what I hope to make of it.
2009: What I’m happy with
Got my fitness back on track: after struggling with undiagnoses...
Putting my money where my mouth is
Regarding my announced self-challenge earlier this week, I’m not putting my money where my mouth is, I have booked and paid my place for the following events:
Edinburgh Marathon on the 23rd of May, 2010
Miami Ironman 70.3 on the 30th of October 2010
It means if I can stay free of injuries and don’t have any unforeseen problems, I will do my 2011 challenge in 2010. I’m hoping...
My Extreme Challenge ("Ironman" is for pussies!)
Though my usually calm exterior hides it well, at heart I’m a restless soul, looking for the next big idea, the next big adventure and challenge to take on. If I don’t have a “Big Thing” in my life to work towards, I easily get bored and somewhat aimless.
For the last couple of months I’ve been thinking about what I could take on, and my mind inevitably drifted off...
Why the corporate world is broken
Large corporations as well as public sectors are hugely inefficient, and for good reason. Both sides are to an alarming extent run by career bureaucrats: peoples incentives are bound to activity based targets rather than value based achievement. Working towards bad incentives and targets get rewarded with “upward mobility” in the hierarchy, remuneration in most organizations is tied...
Passion and positive thinking bullshit
There seems to be a meme, especially in Lifestyle Design circles that you should do what you’re passionate about, and money will come. A second variation of this is that you can get anything you want, if you just think positively and want it hard enough. I call bullshit.
I’m pretty passionate about football (or “soccer”), especially when it comes to “my team”...
Links trump downloads
I was puzzled for the longest time why YouTube ended up dominating online video, while downloads languished, and the same thing seems to be happening again in online music: once dominant iTunes is getting challenged by streaming music from Spotify.
From an infrastructure point of view, this makes little sense: downloads can be made economically efficient through distributed downloads, CDN’s...